Key Labor Union Likely to Endorse Howard Dean
10.30.03 17 minutes ago
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The AFL-CIO's largest union is likely to endorse
Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean next week, political sources
said on Thursday, a step that would hand the former Vermont governor one of
labor's biggest prizes and deal a blow to rival Richard Gephardt.
The 63-member executive board of the 1.6 million member Service Employees
International Union, one of the nation's most politically active unions,
will meet on Nov. 6 to consider an endorsement.
"It is becoming clear that the passion of the members lies with Governor
Dean, and that ultimately the decision before the board will be to either
endorse him or endorse no one," said SEIU President Andy Stern, adding that
no final decision will be made until next week's meeting.
"Until that meeting takes place, any speculation as to what the result of
that vote will be is just that: speculation," he said in a statement.
The union's highly coveted endorsement, which has been courted by all nine
Democrats vying for the right to challenge President Bush in 2004, would be
a coup for Dean.
It would enhance his already extensive grass-roots organizing muscle and
give him a boost in the early caucus state of Iowa, where he has battled
Gephardt for the top spot in the polls, and in the first primary state of
New Hampshire, where he leads the polls.
Gephardt, who has strong labor support nationwide and the backing of 20
international unions, has counted on labor to put him over the top in Iowa
and elsewhere.
But the Missouri congressman failed to win the backing of the full AFL-CIO
labor federation, which declined to make an endorsement this month because
no candidate had the required support of AFL-CIO unions representing
two-thirds of the membership.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney freed affiliate unions to make their own
endorsement decisions, but other Democratic presidential contenders had been
urging the SEIU to hold off.
Stern and other union officials were meeting with retired Gen. Wesley Clark,
the latest candidate to seek their support, later on Thursday, a union
spokeswoman said.
The Democratic candidates courted the SEIU's most active members at a
meeting in Washington last month, and Dean told Stern the union's backing
would be crucial to help him shorten the Democratic nominating race.
Dean picked up his first AFL-CIO endorsement, from the painters union,
earlier this week, along with one from the California Teachers Association.
If the SEIU decides not to make an endorsement next week, it could free its
local unions to make their own decisions, union spokeswoman Sara Howard
said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=1&u=/nm/20031030/pl_nm
/politics_labor_dc
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Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban
affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US,
under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr,
sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and
botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to
tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella
melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which
causes gas gangrene.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0908-08.htm
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