


But Mr. Obama hopes the unions still have enough juice left to help him grab come-from-behind victories over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tomorrow in Ohio and Texas, where the SEIU is spending $1.4 million on his behalf. Union membership may have been on the decline in the past decade, but its numbers rebounded slightly in the past year and Democratic candidates still value the funding, foot soldiers and political advertising union backing can provide.
"We currently have over 1,000 members and volunteer staff in Ohio sending direct mail and making phone calls to several hundred thousand voters in the state," SEIU spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller said.
In Ohio, more than 40 percent of the party"s primary voters are from union families. To date, about three in 10 Democratic voters have come from households with at least one union member — and exit polls show they prefer Mrs. Clinton by about four percentage points.
Whether their electoral power is waxing or waning, unions still exert a strong influence on the positions the candidates take.
Mr. Obama, since scooping up endorsements from major umbrella organizations, has sharpened his attack of his rival"s support of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — through her association with the Clinton administration — that many union workers blame for the loss of factory work, particularly in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
"There are few areas of the country that have been hurt worse by these [trade] agreements than Ohio, which has lost nearly 50,000 jobs because of NAFTA and over 60,000 due to the growing trade deficit in China," Mr. Obama said on the campaign trail recently in Lorain, Ohio.
"It"s also time to let our unions do what they do best — organize our workers. If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union. It"s that simple. We need to stand up to the business lobby and pass the Employee Free Choice Act. That"s why I"ve been fighting for it in the Senate, and that"s why I"ll make it the law of the land when I"m president of the United States."
The Obama camp is hoping the unions will help it chip away Mrs. Clinton"s advantage with Hispanics in Texas. The SEIU has about 700 members and staff canvassing for Mr. Obama, largely in outreach to communities with Spanish-language media, including two ad buys, one in English and one in Spanish.
"We're sensing that there has been a real shift among voters and a lot of momentum behind the belief that Barack Obama is the candidate who will bring the change we need," Ms. Mueller said. "We feel very confident that he will win both Texas and Ohio on Tuesday."
Clinton's campaign has been complaining lately about the fact that Mr. Obama is getting the benefits of the union support, at a time when it desperately needs advertising dollars.
"While Barack Obama once decried outside expenditures as a 'major loophole in campaign-finance reform' and urged his primary opponents to do more than just 'talk the talk,' the Obama campaign today tacitly embraced a significant, last-minute outside-expenditure effort being organized on his behalf by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union," said Howard Wolfson, communications director for the Clinton campaign.
Mr. Wolfson said Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Edwards for taking outside money from so-called 527s, independent nonprofit political organizations, after denouncing it as a campaign-finance loophole in December, but said Mr. Obama is now doing the same thing.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad buys in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown that started running Feb. 26 and run through tomorrow, when Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont will hold primaries.
"For once: Can we put American jobs for workers first? Can we have a recovery that reaches Main Street? And can we stop spending money in Iraq and start spending it here? Can we have affordable health care for everyone? For everyone? For everyone? Can we really elect a president we can believe in?" the ad says, followed by Mr. Obama saying, "Yes, we can."
The political spinning of union support by Mrs. Clinton against Mr. Obama this week and by Mr. Obama two months ago against Mr. Edwards only highlights how coveted the union endorsements continues to be and the benefits that can come with them, despite the fact that they no longer provide that warm blanket of assured victory.
"It may appear that union endorsements aren't as useful as they used to be, but you have to factor into the equation the diversity of political opinions among the different unions that is playing a part in this 2008 election cycle," said William Galston, a political analyst with the Brookings Institute.
"Each of the three candidates have had some appeal with the union movement. So you have a variety of positions pulling the unions in multiple directions."
Mr. Galston also said the unions are working on finding ways to attract workers in different fields outside of industrial work as they themselves adapt to the new economy, and there is evidence to indicate that union losses are leveling off.
In 2004, there were 15.8 million union members nationwide, about 12 percent of the U.S. work force. That was after a decline of 369,000 that year.
Last year, the number of workers belonging to a union rose by 311,000 to 15.7 million, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January.
(washingtontimes.com)