Edwards Bets on Union Support to Grab Momentum in Early Races

[JohnLocke]

Edwards Bets on Union Support to Grab Momentum in Early Races
By Heidi Przybyla--Bloomberg
Monday, April 9, 2007
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For John Edwards, the road to the presidency runs through Alan Young, a teachers' union official in Des Moines, Iowa.

The former North Carolina senator's strategy for winning the Democratic nomination is to knock off one of the two front- runners, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in the early primaries and make the next round a head-to-head contest. To do that, he is focusing his campaign efforts on labor.
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Edwards campaign manager David Bonior, a former Democratic congressman from Michigan with close ties to labor, argues these early states will provide the momentum for bigger contests later.

``The early calendar is a very good playing field for us,'' Bonior said. ``When we build on these early victories, this field changes.''

While national labor leaders have made clear they are in no hurry to make endorsements, Edwards has been courting them aggressively. ``Edwards has seen union presidents more than they've seen each other,'' said Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, the nation's largest union of health-care workers.

The candidate is also taking his message directly to local chapters. In the past two years, he has lent his support to at least 85 local union drives and pushed to increase the minimum wage in six states.
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Edwards, the only 2008 candidate to offer a specific universal health-care plan, is critical of free trade and vows to eradicate poverty. These positions resonate with many union leaders. ``His message is making unions predisposed to him,'' said Young, who met privately with Edwards last week.

On the stump, Edwards ties his emphasis on fighting inequality to his support of unions. ``The greatest anti-poverty movement in American history is the organized-labor movement,'' he said last week at a town-hall meeting in a packed high school gymnasium in Des Moines. ``I've walked picket lines all over this country standing up for health care, for working people, for pension protection.''

Edwards also has a personal connection to labor. His father worked in textile mills, and his brother is a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

On April 11, Edwards will be the first presidential candidate to participate in the ``Walk a Day in My Shoes'' campaign organized by Stern's SEIU. He will accompany a nurse's aide to work in New York's Westchester County, taking his union message to Clinton's home turf. Clinton, 59, has accepted a similar challenge, though no date has been set.
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