Big Labor: what its seal of approval means

Howard Dean's expected endorsement Wednesday by two large and politically influential unions - the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) - will give the former Vermont governor added organizational support and a more diverse look to his campaign.

More important, it lends the anti-establishment candidate his first significant stamp of approval from the Democratic establishment - which could make it a pivotal moment in the race.

Certainly, labor has proven a decisive force in past Democratic primaries. The two times the AFL-CIO has endorsed a candidate, in 2000 and 1984, it helped Al Gore and Walter Mondale crush challenges from Bill Bradley and Gary Hart. In other years, individual unions breaking from the pack have played kingmaker - as when

AFSCME expressed early support for Bill Clinton in 1992.

This cycle, Dr. Dean's strongest challenger may turn out to be the candidate with the most overall labor support: Rep. Richard Gephardt, who currently claims 20 union endorsements to Dean's three. In the nation's first caucus state of Iowa, the estimated 17,000 AFSCME and SEIU members supporting Dean will face off against the 60,000 or so other union members supporting Mr. Gephardt.

Yet experts note that the SEIU and AFSCME are also among the largest and most politically sophisticated unions in the country, giving their endorsements additional weight - even as they effectively deny Gephardt the overall AFL-CIO nod.

Moreover, while organized labor represents the bulk of Gephardt's support, Dean's union backing is more of a powerful complement, adding depth and experience to an already strong, though less traditional, organization. Coming on the heels of Dean's announcement that he will not take federal campaign matching funds, the endorsements will likely give his campaign even more momentum, and further solidify his front-runner status.

"These endorsements are enormously important for Howard Dean," says David Kusnet, a former Clinton speechwriter and former AFSCME official. "Dean has so much support from other sources, that for him also to be having labor support gives him a very broad base."

Padoxically, although union membership has been declining in recent years, labor's clout at the ballot box has grown, as it has come to represent a larger share of the participating electorate. In the 2000 general election, 26 percent of all voters came from union households, up from 19 percent in 1992 - a turnout that helped Gore win key Rust Belt states such as Michigan, as well as the overall popular vote. Experts trace labor's increased political participation in part to a change in leadership - namely, John Sweeney's becoming head of the AFL-CIO in 1995 - and partly to a new sense of urgency after the 1994 GOP takeover of Congress.

"You could trace a real order-of-magnitude improvement in labor's [political] skills and effectiveness in reaction to Republicans gaining the House in 1994," says Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at the University of California at Berkeley.

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