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Emphasizing the Hillary Clinton campaign's continuing theme of consolidating support, today the American Federation of Teachers made a well-timed, though long-expected, announcement that it is endorsing Clinton. The move was long expected for three reasons: Clinton's historic commitment to and advocacy work around the education of children have given her deep relationships in the education community; the largest AFT affiliate is based in New York; and more than three-fourths of teachers are female. Democratic and Democrat-leaning women favored Clinton over Barack Obama by a whopping 42 percentage points in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Clinton campaign women's outreach director Dana Singiser e-mailed "opinion leaders" the news:
today’s news is VERY exciting – on the heels of yesterday’s news that Hillary raised $27 million from over 100,000 donors – just this morning, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) voted to endorse Hillary! The AFT has more than 3,000 local affiliates nationwide, 43 state affiliates, and more than 1.4 million members. We are thrilled that Hillary’s commitment to quality education has been recognized by the leadership and members of the AFT.This brings the number of national unions endorsing Clinton to five, the others being: the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers; the National Association of Letter Carriers; the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace workers (IAM); and the United Transportation Union.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
