4:03 p.m. update: Edwards has also scored the backing of SEIU chapters in California (656,000 members), Washington (103,000 members), Michigan (70,000 members), Idaho (400 members), Montana (500 members), Minnesota (28,000 members), Ohio (22,000 members), West Virginia (4,000 members) and Oregon (46,000 members).
By Jim Tankersley
The Iowa chapter of the Services Employees International Union boasts 2,000 members. By sheer manpower alone, its endorsement of Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards this morning would appear far less significant than the 500,000 carpenters or the 1.2 million steelworkers who endorsed the former North Carolina senator earlier this year.
But make no mistake: This could be one of the most important endorsements Edwards gets.
The Iowa SEIU has effectively given Edwards a home port for other – read: bigger and richer – Edwards-backing SEIU chapters across the country to ship ground troops and financial support into a crucial early state. At the same time, it has blockaded his rivals for the Democratic nomination, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, from sending their own SEIU supporters into the state.
The national SEIU declined to endorse a candidate this year, instead opting to let chapters endorse state-by-state. The rules of those endorsements prohibit chapters with conflicting endorsements from opposing one another in individual states. For example, if the Illinois SEIU endorses Obama, it can’t send members down the interstate to Iowa to campaign for him there, because the Iowa SEIU backs Edwards.
The rules don’t prohibit chapters who support the same candidate from joining forces in key states. So Iowa’s 2,000 members could get lots of help from other pro-Edwards chapters.
The Iowa chapter cited health care for supporting Edwards, who sits behind Clinton and Obama in national polls but is running stronger in Iowa.
“In Iowa, we are uniquely positioned to see and hear the candidates, and members are well informed on the issues important to working families,” Iowa SEIU Local 199 President Cathy Glasson said in a press release. “John Edwards earned our support by taking a strong stand on health care and because he offers our members the greatest hope for restoring the American Dream.”
Edwards won’t be getting any formal help from the Illinois and Indiana SEIU, whose 170,000 members voted unanimously for Obama’s campaign, the union said. Obama has had a longstanding relationship with SEIU in Illinois.
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Tom Balanoff, the president of the SEIU Illinois State Council said in a statement that Obama is “a real fighter for working families with a proven track record of getting things done.” Balanoff also cited Obama’s early opposition to the Iraq War as a factor for the endorsement.
Edwards, of course, would have preferred to get the national SEIU endorsement after aggressively courting union support throughout the campaign. And the SEIU, while strong, showed in 2004 it can’t guarantee a winner in Iowa.
That year, it endorsed Howard Dean.