Hillary Clinton extended her lead over Bernie Sanders in the race for union endorsements on Tuesday, getting the support of the Laborers' International Union of North America, or LIUNA. The half-million-member union follows the Ironworkers Union, which endorsed on Monday. This makes 15 national or international union endorsements for Clinton to just two for Sanders. Sanders is getting a significant, if eyebrow-raising, form of support from one of those unions, though. The National Nurses Union’s Super PAC has spent more than $550,000 supporting Sanders, despite his general opposition to Super PACs:
“What I have said over and over again is that I have not and will not raise a nickel for a super PAC,” Mr. Sanders said in the interview on Monday. “I am the only Democratic candidate who does not have a super PAC. I will not have a super PAC. They are nurses, and they are fighting for the health care of their people. They are doing what they think is appropriate. I do not have a super PAC.”
This is a completely fair argument—the contributions of tens of thousands of workers are a world apart from Super PACs funded by a handful of billionaires. It’s also not dissimilar to Clinton’s 2007 defense of taking contributions from lobbyists. But however it’s put, it’s not a bad thing for working people to have a small fraction of the impact on a race that big money so routinely has.