October 31, 2007
NH SEIU Shenanigans, Endorsement Discontent Abounds
Sen. John Edwards won the influential endorsement of the New Hampshire Service Employees Association by a slim margin Tuesday night – but only after an initial vote went to Sen. Barack Obama and a later tie vote was broken by the group’s president, a loyal Edwards supporter.
NBC/NJ campaign reporter Aswini Anurabajan reports that Edwards has Rodney Woodill to thank for the win. If Woodill, who represents 900 county and municipal employees, hadn’t received a call from his wife Tuesday night asking him to come home to care for his sick two-week-old baby instead of heading to Concord for the vote, Obama would likely gotten the association’s nod.
The board voted without Woodill, who obliged his wife and returned home. The final count was an eight-to-eight tie between Obama and Edwards. Local 1984’s president Gary Smith cast the deciding vote, handing the support of the 10,000 member union to Edwards.
“If I had gone straight to the meeting, there wouldn’t have been an endorsement for John Edwards last night,” Woodill said in an interview today.
The tight vote was indicative of a union leadership split between the two candidates and revealed a process fraught with internal politics.
The three leading Democratic candidates had lobbied intensely for the committee’s vote. President Clinton called members of the board on his wife’s behalf. Obama showed up to personally make his plea. Edwards also met with the board.
Last Monday the group’s political education committee made a 10-to-five decision to recommend Edwards for the union’s endorsement. But the organization’s board of directors bucked the committee, and in an unprecedented move, ditched its recommendation. Instead, members of the board voted seven-to-five to endorse Obama. But then, in an equally inexplicable move, they failed to formalize the endorsement.
Smith called the Obama campaign the next day to tell them their candidate would have the union’s support.
But when the Board met again on Friday evening, Smith moved for another vote. But Woodill, a board member, was having none of it. He said that holding another vote violated a union rule that all board votes are binding.
At an internal stalemate, members decided that a straw poll, to be taken at the state convention in Nashua over the weekend, would decide things.
Edwards won the straw poll by 23 votes to Obama’s 19. Perhaps a mark of their discontent, 50 members voted not to endorse any candidate, either Republican or Democrat, according to Woodill.
When the board met last night to ratify the straw poll and make a final decision, Woodill was home with his baby, and Senator Edwards squeaked to a victory.
Woodill says both he and the state and county employees that he represents are furious. Calling himself a union man through and through, Woodill says that the process was too convoluted and that the international union would “find itself eating crow” because the candidate they most oppose, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, will end up becoming the Democratic nominee.
While New Hampshire’s SEA is known to be politically effective, under current rules, only states that have also endorsed Edwards can send volunteers and resources to New Hampshire.
Edwards has received 12 endorsements from state SEIU chapters. The international union, under President Andy Stern, decided not to endorse a candidate in the primaries. Obama has received the endorsements of five state chapters. Clinton has not been backed by any of the state chapters.
Posted at 05:31 PM
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