It looks likely that this week Howard Dean will receive the endorsements of the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The SEIU endorsement had long been rumored to go to Dean, but the AFSCME endorsement is probably the biggest earthquake of the campaign to date; AFSCME would never endorse Dean if it believed he could not be elected and govern effectively, but this endorsement still probably has more to do with internal labor politics than we've heard so far. Whatever the internal factors that contributed to AFSCME's apparent decision to back Dean, reading commentary about what motivates labor endorsement reveals that many people are uninformed about much of what factors into a union's endorsement and how these factors may further affect the presidential primaries.
The starting point for any discussion of union endorsements is to remember that unions are democratic organizations led by officers accountable to the members who voted them in, either through direct vote (like the Teamsters, Steelworkers, Laborers, etc.) or representative elections (like most other international unions). Therefore, these decisions aren't just about who is chummy with which pol; there are consequences to how officials use their union's prestige and material resources, and union officers who make repeated mistakes have to deal with the repercussions in their next election.
The second thing to keep in mind is that unions don't exist and thrive so they can do politics, they do politics so they can exist and hopefully thrive. Electoral politics is but one part of a union's activity, and if it's the most visible activity to people outside the union, it pales in importance to protecting a member being treated unfairly by her supervisor, or to embodying a collective voice for bargaining for a fair wage and benefits, or to act as an instrument of wider social change in areas beyond electioneering, like raising funds for the United Way, supporting other causes in the U.S. like civil and human rights, and making common cause with workers around the world.
Even when we get to the more purely political calculations, a factor that is often misunderstood is a union's motivation for endorsing, and how it relates to electability. For example, many folks instinctively attribute any endorsement for Dick Gephardt as little more than an expression of loyalty for his many years of fighting for the rights of working people and union members. This interpretation insults the motivations and competence of the people who guide their unions into the endorsement. There are plenty of people whose support for their candidate includes a strong dose of idealism--there may be more conventionally competitive candidates in a race, but these folks may occasionally chose the candidate who best embodies their ideals and aspirations. For many in labor, a Gephardt Presidency would fulfill their dream of electing the first President whose instinctual reaction to almost any domestic social or economic issue would be to examine its implications for working people and provide organized labor a seat at the head of the table for all policy discussions.
It is also important to distinguish between a candidate's ability to win and how that candidate would perform in office. Labor unions are seldom so craven as to endorse somebody simply because that candidate is the one most likely to win. Sometimes they will endorse a candidate precisely because that candidate is not the person best positioned to win, but among all the candidates is likely to be the most pro-labor person once in office and is competitive enough that a strong and unified effort from labor could deliver the winning margin. Gray Davis in 1998 is a perfect example. He was widely believed to be the weakest candidate of the three major contestants for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. But with strong and unified labor support, he was able to sneak through the primary against the better funded and more moderate Jane Harman and Al Checchi. Of course once in office Davis moved to the center on almost all issues, alienating much of his Democratic base. But to his credit, he never forgot that he wouldn't have made it to the governor's chair without labor, and even in these last days of his administration he's continued to sign legislation, promulgate administrative rules, and issue executive orders that benefit the working people and members of labor unions.
Davis' 1998 primary victory is an example of how labor, when unified behind a single candidate, can deliver an unexpected primary win for its candidate. Al Gore's crushing defeat of Bill Bradley (who raised more money that Gore) provides evidence of what can happen when labor unifies behind a candidate who may otherwise be deadlocked with his opponent. But there are plenty of cases in which candidates lost when major labor endorsements were split between candidates.
In the 1994 Michigan gubernatorial primary ex-Congressman Howard Wolpe garnered the endorsement of the 900 pound gorilla of Michigan Democratic Party politics, the United Auto Workers, along with several other unions. But the SEIU and several of the building trades unions backed then-State Senator Debbie Stabenow, and the Teamsters and the (non-AFL-CIO) Michigan Education Association went with former state government official Larry Owen. Wolpe won a bruising and draining primary, but labor's ability to decisively effect the outcome was diminished by its fractionalization, and the conflicting endorsements fomented acrimony within labor and the party that continued past that year's primary election.
So what does this mean for the Presidential primary? Well, it's probably unlikely that Dick Gephardt gets any more union endorsements. For a long time it's seemed that his problem was several unions were willing to endorse him as long as it led to his endorsement by the full AFL-CIO. But like five polite but still hungry people eying the last piece of pizza, no one was prepared to stick our their hands (or their necks) to help him out. If we assume that AFSCME will join the SEIU in endorsing Dean, the AFL-CIO endorsement is dead, and we now have a case similar to that 1994 gubernatorial primary in Michigan. But unlike back then, most of the uncommitted unions are now likely to stay out.
The UAW announced this week there would be no endorsement by the International Union. For the remaining unions, who often seek allies among the biggest AFL-CIO affiliates (which besides SEIU and AFSCME includes Gephardt-backers UFCW, Steel, and Teamsters), the best decision is probably to stay out of the primaries. Most of the uncommitted unions are like kids quietly eating lunch in the cafeteria until a fight breaks out and a tray of food crashes in the middle of their table; their choice is to pick a side and enter the fray, or pick up their lunches and get the heck out of the way. Most uncommitted unions will chose the latter, and if Gephardt loses momentum, the unions that have endorsed him may lose their stomach for the fight and offer up only half-hearted support. After the primary battles everyone will almost certainly unify behind the Democratic candidate. But beyond what the SEIU/AFSCME endorsements bring to Howard Dean, their greatest impact is probably what they deny to Dick Gephardt and to many of their brethren in the labor movement: Gephardt can no longer say he is THE candidate of labor, and unions can no longer tell their members that labor is united, so it's inevitable that at least one candidate of the divided labor movement is going to be defeated.