Bernie Sanders finishes up speech at National Nurses United Monday afternoon.
Bernie Sanders
snagged the support of a major union Monday, National Nurses United. The only other major union endorsement so far for a Democratic candidate is that of the American Federation of Teachers, which is supporting Hillary Clinton. Here's Dave Jamieson:
National Nurses United, which represents 185,000 nurses, most of them women, hosted a brunch with Sanders on Monday in Oakland, California. The union's leadership announced there that they would formally back the senator and campaign on his behalf as he competes with front-runner Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
The union's executive director, RoseAnn DeMoro, told The Huffington Post that Sanders had earned the support of NNU's board and had won by a wide margin in a poll of the membership.
"We were stunned by the results," DeMoro said. "It was so overwhelming for Bernie Sanders."
DeMoro also noted of Sanders that "What he's not about is himself. He's about building a social movement for humanistic change."
Although the AFT and NNU's endorsements will probably spur other unions to make their preferences known, the umbrella AFL-CIO itself is likely to wait a while. But not too long. “The Koch brothers got boots on the ground right now,” says Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees and chair of the AFL-CIO executive council’s political committee. “We’ve got to put boots on the ground.”
Sanders is, as this is published, answering questions in a National Nurses United web-based Q&A session here.
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smiley7 has a discussion up on the subject here.