SEIU

EDWARDS WINS SEIU STRAW POLL. Leave it up to a blogger to spill the beans. As SEIU members predicted on Monday evening, John Edwards won the non-binding SEIU membership straw poll, according to a blog item posted by Robert Haaland, a political organizer for SEIU Local 790, on the group blog Left in SF. The […]

WHAT’S GOING ON, SEIU? The union definitely polled its members here in Washington, D.C. on Monday to ascertain their presidential pick. Ballots were handed out and deposited outside the auditorium doors. The buzz in the hall after the speeches was all Obama, although Edwards support ran deep. So why didn’t SEIU announce the straw poll […]

SEIU PRESIDENTIAL PLANS. This is in real-time, people. I’m on the SEIU’s press conference call to announce the outcome of their member straw poll here in D.C. on Monday. And it’s…nobody? SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger bragged about how the union successfully pushed every Democratic candidate toward universal health care. She said the SEIU executive board […]

SEIU MEMBERS PREDICT EDWARDS ENDORSEMENT. (Photos: SEIU members in John Edwards T-shirts provided by their SEIU locals. Washington, D.C., Sept. 17, 2007.) It’s hard sometimes in the heat of the moment to distinguish enthusiasm for a politician’s rousing speech from enthusiasm for the politician himself. So in the cool of the evening I headed out […]

EDWARDS ON POVERTY, IMMIGRATION, THE WAR AT SEIU. A key distinction emerges between John Edwards and Hillary Clinton; Hillary discussed the history of labor in terms of the creation of the middle class, Edwards portrays it as a fight against poverty: “The greatest anti-poverty movement in American history is the organized labor movement.” This is […]

HRC AT THE SEIU. Hillary’s goal today is to recast herself as a populist, despite organized labor’s skepticism of her husband’s trade policies and her own ties to corporate donors and advisers. “People say, ‘Well, when you’re president, will labor have a seat at the table?’ Labor built the table,” she says. To a great […]

HERE COMES HILLARY AT SEIU. We’re watching her “day in my shoes” video. Clinton went to work with a nurse and she speaks about the importance of lowering nurse-patient ratios. Now she’s actually coming on stage to the cheesy tune that won her campaign song contest, “You and I” by Celine Dion. We were all […]

SEIU’S ANNA BURGER: “We will elect the next president of the United States.” Burger just said only “one Republican” has offered to participate in the SEIU’s “Walk a Day in My Shoes” program, in which politicians work a day with a SEIU member nurse, custodian, home health care worker, or teacher. That Republican is Mike […]