And top union officials who support Obama’s rivals are in turn accusing the Illinois Democrat, who once sought their endorsements, of trying to damage labor’s political role.
“I’m taken aback that somebody like Obama would think that Oprah Winfrey has a greater right to participate in the political process than the 4 million people I represent,” Edward J. McElroy, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has spent $799,619 on New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s behalf, said, referring to the television host’s high-profile support for Obama. “It’s sour grapes. It sounds just like the charges the Republicans make.”
Gerald W. McEntee, the president of the other major union supporting Clinton,
wrote on The Huffington Post that “the Obama campaign’s criticism of our political action committee and some of the so-called 527 efforts, such as the one organized in support of [John] Edwards, is troubling because they are suggesting that workers are somehow a special interest, just like insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry.”
”We fight for the general interest,” wrote McEntee, whose American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has spent $1,409,312 boosting Clinton and criticizing Obama.
Jennifer Farmer, a spokeswoman for an Ohio Service Employees International Union council — one of several unions that have given more than $1 million combined to a fund that aids Edwards — dismissed Obama’s complaints as “politics as usual.”
The independent support — $2.7 million on Clinton’s behalf and $2.1 million on Edwards’ at the last count — is flowing simply at too high a volume for Obama to shrug off, and it’s immediately noticeable on the airwaves and in the mailboxes in Iowa.
So his campaign has tried to make the most of it, using it to raise money in urgent e-mails, to cast him as a reformer to reform-minded Iowans, and to cast Edwards — who says he opposes the spending — as a hypocrite.
Obama himself has avoided denouncing the union spending. “I love labor,” he said, when asked directly last week whether he thought the unions had a right to spend. He said his problem was with contradictions in Edwards’ stance.
He has also said he’ll accept outside funding if he’s the Democratic nominee, unless his Republican opponent also turns it down.
(McEntee cited a quote from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in which Obama appears to refer to labor unions as “special interests,” but Obama has never said that directly.)
Obama’s staff, however, has aggressively pushed the suggestion that the spending itself is in some way untoward, and has at times downplayed labor’s role in it.
“Outside groups are in the process of pouring more than $3.2 million into Iowa to support Hillary Clinton and John Edwards,” wrote Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, in an e-mail solicitation on Dec. 27.
The e-mail referred to AFSCME as “Hillary Clinton’s friends from Washington” and didn’t include the word “labor” or “union.”
“Instead of benefiting from $3.2 million in money from big interests over the next week, we’re asking 32,000 new supporters to give whatever they can afford,” he wrote.
He was more direct in a memo to reporters, naming the unions, lobby groups and wealthy individuals involved.
“There is no doubt that the size of the spending and its underhanded nature deserve further scrutiny,” Plouffe wrote.
The campaign also released a letter from an AFSCME member in Iowa who wrote that she was dropping out of the union in disgust at their attacks on Obama.
Obama’s spokesman, Bill Burton, didn’t respond directly to a question of whether the labor spending is appropriate, referring instead to past statements. And many of Obama’s senior aides have worked for, or benefited from, independent spending in the past.
In 2004, for instance, Plouffe managed the campaign of House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt, while Obama’s communications director, Robert Gibbs, worked for an independent group funded by Gephardt supporters that aired a notorious ad attacking former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s national security credentials by using the visage of Osama bin Laden.
Plouffe didn’t make clear in his memo which tactics he was describing as “underhanded.” But Obama’s campaign has been particularly critical of AFSCME’s mailings, which can be misleading: The mailings criticize Obama’s health care plan and include a quotes from Edwards, which could lead readers to blame the attack on Edwards.
The AFSCME tactics have produced some ambivalence within the labor movement, as well.
“The law is the law and people can do what they can do,” said the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, Harold A. Schaitberger, whose union has supported Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) for president in newspaper ads and billboards.
But he said his spending always makes clear that it’s communicating his members’ endorsement.
“You should be very, very straight up what you’re doing, as opposed to sometimes creating illusions about who you are and what you’re doing on behalf of who,” he said, adding that he is “not critical of any of my colleagues” in labor.
Others have suggested that Obama could pay for his distance from labor if he becomes the nominee, as Democrats traditionally rely heavily on unions for organizational support.
“They really run the risk of depressing the enthusiasm for him as a potential nominee,” said AFSCME political director Larry Scanlon.
Others, however, doubt whether labor can afford not to support any of the Democratic nominees — all of whom have promised to ease union organizing and tighten trade restrictions — against the nominee of a Republican Party who’s often openly hostile to organized labor.
“It’s a choice of allowing a party that is trying to kill it to keep power versus a Democratic Party, which isn’t always the greatest ally, but is an ally and isn’t out to kill it every day,” said Jonathan Tasini, the executive director of a pro-labor research group, the Labor Research Association.
Barack Obama
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