A dedicated reader of MNPublius passed along this little nugget…
Morillo also announced the union’s endorsement of Franken during the rally.
So obviously this is SEIU Local 26, and I would venture to guess that since Javier Morillo is the president of the local he would have the inside track on who they were endorsing. I don’t know if it’s just local 26 or if it’s the state council.
I spoke with Andy Barr communications director for Al Franken’s campaign and he wouldn’t confirm or deny any endorsements but said,
“Al is a member of four unions, and he believes that unions are one of the last defenses of the middle class. He’s proud to stand with them every day.”
As one of the fastest growing unions in the state and country, this is a big pickup for Franken. If it’s the state council it’s 28K members strong, and if it’s just local 26 it’s 6K workers wide (not a shabby deal considering Morillo’s political acumen and organizational ability).
I’d expect to see a press release tomorrow.
Sean Adds: I didn’t include it in my original post, but the picture up there, was taken by my great friend Aaron Landry and you can see the original on Flikr.
After the jump the SEIU Press Release
SEIU Minnesota State Council
Endorses Al Franken for U.S. Senate
SEIU Members Ready to Mobilize their Co-Workers and Communities to Elect Al Franken
St. Paul, MN —Members and leaders of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Minnesota State Council today announced the endorsement of DFL candidate Al Franken for U.S. Senate in 2008. SEIU is the largest, fastest-growing union in the country with 1.9 million members nationwide and more than 28,000 members in Minnesota.
The announcement comes after candidates for U.S. Senate walked a day in the shoes of an SEIU member to get firsthand experience in the day in the life of a working Minnesotan. In addition, candidates completed a questionnaire on issues important to members and their families; participated in picket lines and organizing drives; appeared at a “meet and greet” with members; and met with members of the State Council Executive Board.
“Al worked alongside me for a day — he experienced first hand what it was like to provide care in a nursing home,” said Ulysses Bridges, a member of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota at Robbinsdale Rehabilitation and Care Center. “He can come back and walk in my shoes anytime, but first I want him to go to Washington D.C. and work hard for all of us — it’s time for a Senator who takes us to heart.”
“SEIU will play an important role in making sure Al Franken is elected in November,” said Julie Schnell, President of the SEIU Minnesota State Council and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota. “Our members are active, involved and determined to make a difference.”
SEIU in Minnesota includes more than 14,000 hospital, clinic and nursing home workers (SEIU Healthcare Minnesota), over 8,000 public service school employees who work as bus drivers, secretaries, paraprofessionals, buildings and grounds employees, school food service workers and child care workers (Local 284 and Local 63), and almost 6,000 property service workers (Local 26). SEIU is united with more than 28,000 members statewide and is a powerful voice for Minnesota’s working families.
This is great news!
The union members will make up there own minds, as have I- I’m a retired Teamster supporting Ciresi. In a race where all three candidates support labor, union endorsements are kind of meaningless. I’ve attended 8 county unit conventions this cycle, and I’ve yet to see union endorsements have any effect on the delegate selection- Franken isn’t getting anywhere near half the delegates, never mind the 60% needed for endorsement.
In our southern suburb, Franken is running away with it, maybe 80-90% to 5-10% for the other guys. SEIU is just icing on the cake. I respect both Ciresi and Nelson-Pallmeyer greatly, they are great Democrats, but this race is nearly over. Senator Franken, sounds nice doesn’t it?
In my South Minneapolis precinct Frankin got 60%, Palymer forgot his name got 35% and the rest were a few for Cerisis and undecided. Cerisis has the old pols but won’t make a dent at the Convention. It is going to be Al All The Way to the Senate!
Franken has been a flop on the frozen prairies. In the two conventions I attended last weekend that subcaucused, Ciresi, Franken, and Nelson-Pallmeyer got 1/3rd of the delegates each. The DFLers are really looking over Franken, and finding him wanting- his New York residence, NY and CA wealthy donor bases, etc. are causing the delegates to drop Franken.
I am endorsing Franken. And by endorsing him, I mean that I will no longer write negative things about him. Not because I’ve changed my mind - Franken is still a huge ass - but because he is going to be the nominee and despite his flaws, he will be a huge improvement over Norm Coleman.
So, go Al Franken. yay.
I think my head might have just exploded.
Sean
I have also been to 8 county unit conventions in the past 3 weeks. As I Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer volunteer. I have also seen only the weakest of support for Franken. They know who he is, and they want to beat Coleman, but they are not going Franken by any more than a third.
Two examples: At the Swift convention on Saturday night, then again at the Big Stone convention on Sunday afternoon, Franken supporters pushed for a walking subcaucus procedure. This is somewhat unusual, since at these smaller county conventions they usually just raise hands and vote. But it totally backfired. In both conventions, the Ciresi subcaucus wasn’t viable, they ended up mostly folding into the Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer subcaucus, and Jack’s group got 2 of the 3 delegates and 2 of the 3 alternates. From each convention.
The union story is more complicated. I won’t mention the union or the county, but I have been hearing stories about some real solid resentment about a couple of union endorsement.
One person told me that his union hadn’t screened Jack, that he had had several very unfortunate conversations with Franken, that he didn’t feel that the union had made a very good choice. But as a loyal union member, he knows that the only strength is in solidarity, so he went publicly for Franken. I can tell that he is just looking for any excuse to bolt.
A second person from a different union had a similar story, but he ended up defying his union’s endorsement and going for Jack anyway.
It might be time for unions to think a bit about the nature of their power. I understand that some union leaders still believe that Al Franken is the winner, and they want to be on the winning team. But if that means they endorse a candidate whose positions aren’t as good for their members, it leaves them weak. And if they endorse a “winner” with mediocre positions and if that “winner” ends up losing, then the union looks like a bunch of fools. Unless unions pick wisely, they lose solidarity and they lose power. That may be the case in this senate race.
Charley, you’re correct that in those two conventions that subcaucussed Jack, on paper, has two delegates. However, in each convention the Ciresi subcaucus merged with the Nelson-Pallmeyer subcaucus with the agreement that they get to pick one delegate from the Ciresi subcaucus. In practice after the first couple ballots at the state convention the Ciresi and Nelson-Pallmeyer delegates will go with the stronger of those two candidates. They will no go over to Franken- there is a very real “anyone but Franken” movement afoot.
You guys are full of it. Franken has this thing locked up. This is starting to sound like the Lourey / Kelley BS.
Dyna, you are quite accurate about the agreement. We are still over three months away from the state endorsing convention, so it is hard to tell what Ciresi turned Nelson-Pallmeyer delegates will do after the first round of balloting or so. It could be they will turn into Ciresi delegates again, or it could be that even more Ciresi delegates will turn into Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer delegates in later votes. It all depends on the relative strength of the two candidates.
You may not agree with this assessment, Dyna, but I see rather consistent evidence that Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is a stronger candidate than Ciresi at this point. A couple of votes here or there in western Minnesota don’t indicate a trend, of course, but every straw poll or walking caucus I have heard about has shown Ciresi weaker that I would have thought. I would say that the overwhelming evidence I have is that Jack is now the candidate that Franken needs to beat for the endorsement. The media isn’t saying that yet, because they are looking at only the money, but that’s what I see at the caucuses and conventions.
I agree with you completely that Franken support is very, very thin. Everybody knows him, but they don’t support him with much conviction.
All of which leaves me completely dumbfounded as to why Ciresi self-financed another two million dollars last week. It just doesn’t make any sense. The endorsement race shouldn’t really cost more that a quarter million or so. A couple of million only makes sense if you are mounting a huge media campaign for the primary or for the general election. And Mike Ciresi has repeatedly pledged to abide by the endorsement. Even if the state convention deadlocks and Ciresi can go forward with a primary campaign without breaking his promise, why self-donate NOW? Wouldn’t it make more sense to shovel in the money after the convention? Maybe you can make sense of this for me.
Roger, my boy, Dyna and I have been talking about conventions and delegates. You may have noticed that we are not supporting the same candidate, yet we seem to be talking about delegate numbers and even wild speculations without insulting each other or insulting the other person’s candidate. Your sum total argument is the questionable assertion that we are both “full of it.”
Roger, let me ask you a simple question: If Al Franken has a public meltdown, caught on videotape and spread like a virus on YouTube and in the blogs until it finally hits the front page of the Strib the week before Rochester, will you still support him? Will you support Al Franken even after you understand that he doesn’t even have Mike Hatch’s chance of getting elected?
Or what if Al Franken manages to keep listening to his advisors and holds it all together, without a single off-color joke or sexual reference? But what if all that constraint keeps him as colorless and uninspiring as he has been at every single debate or forum so far. Then he gets up to speak at Rochester and all the cheering paid interns in the world can’t make up for the fact that Franken looks weak. And you think over Franken’s chances against Coleman again and you wonder if Franken is really so electable. Would you still vote for Franken, knowing that he would lose every debate to even Norm?
Give a few numbers here, Roger. Make a few speculations. Describe a few scenarios. Join our innocent little game in the comments section of MNPublius. But don’t try to bully us into believing that Franken is inevitable. We have been at the precinct caucuses and in the conventions, and we know that there is nothing inevitable about a Franken endorsement.
Thanks Charley. To be honest, at the two conventions that we attended last weekend that subcaucussed Nelson-Pallmeyer did a little better than Ciresi. The other two that didn’t subcaucus produced uncommitted delegates that certainly weren’t favoring Franken. A couple of those uncommited delegates are definately leaning Ciresi, and I suspect Nelson-Pallmeyer has some support too.
It appears that Franken reached his high water mark around caucus day and it’s all downhill now. At first glance I liked Franken, but the more I got to know him and his campaign the less affinity I had for them. I first volunteered for Franken and then applied for an internship. That got me a lot of unanswered e-mails and a two minute interview for the internship. From that experience I figured out that the Franken campaign doesn’t want me or anyone of my democraphic- old, queer, and gimped up. So I studied the candidates and found Ciresi more matches my beliefs, though Nelson-Pallmeyer is a close second.
Like me, many DFLers have had more time to look over Franken and found him wanting- why should we support a candidate that bashes gays, supports nuclear power, and supported the invasion of Iraq just because he calls himself a democrat?
On the first ballot at the State convention Franken will be down to his base and he’ll be lucky to get 40%. When either Ciresi or Nelson-Pallmeyer are dropped, their supporters will flock to the other. There’s a very strong “anyone but Franken” movement out there, and Franken’s only chance will be to hold on to 40% and block an endorsement. The Franken campaign has been running a primary campaign all along… For a reason.
This conversation has degraded into another “I think I know how many delegates everyone has” conversation. Anecdotal evidence is not persuasive — for every one story someone has another has one giving a completely different impression of the race.
What I want to know: what do people think about this endorsement? SEIU invited all candidates to “walk a day” and all of the candidates did so no campaign can complain that the process ignored one candidate in favor of another. What do people think about the endorsement?
Of course you are right, Mary. Dyna and I have been trading anecdotes and speculations. But I think “degraded” is a little harsh when you consider the previous conversations have been completely unfounded predictions that Franken is the anointed candidate merely because he has more money. Please remember that Franken has also said publicly and quite often that he will abide by the endorsement. He doesn’t have that endorsement yet, of course, and Dyna and I have been trading stories about the endorsement process of delegate selection. This may be unpersuasive, and it certainly is too early to be conclusive. But it is more based in reality than mere hot-air bullying that “Franken has it sewed up.” I see absolutely no evidence for that conclusion. Do you?
But you want to talk about the meaning and power of the SEIU endorsement. Forgive me if I respond with an SEIU anecdote. Javier Morillo happened to be working the floor right near me during the 2006 Rochester convention. I kept wondering why he was wearing a Mike Hatch T-shirt, since I considered Hatch the most likely candidate to betray union principles, as well as Hatch being a pretty autocratic and angry fellow. During the ballots for governor, tremendous pressure was exerted by SEIU and the Carpenters Union to get solid backing for Hatch.
So how did that work out? Hatch got the endorsement, of course. Hatch got the nomination. But it seems that Tim Pawlenty is our governor. Mike Hatch lost it on the campaign trail by calling a reporter a whore. And within weeks of taking office, Hatch’s successor and protege had a scandal involving the appointment of her former boss as employee. Then there was a front-page set-to involving allegations that Lori Swanson was doing union-busting in her own office.
Mary, I am a union member myself, and I have been for every single year of my 40 years teaching, whenever I worked where there was a union to join. My union, Education Minnesota, has also made what I consider to be a very ill-considered endorsement of Al Franken.
Union endorsements could be a powerful and necessary balance to the corrupting power of money in our elections. But that’s not what’s happening right now. Unions seem to be following the same smarmy criteria as the most corrupt lobbyists: they merely sniff the wind to try to find a winner. When they endorse a candidate that is weak on the issues that affect their members, they betray those members. When they pick “winners” who lose, they just make themselves irrelevant. In my opinion, both SEIU and Education Minnesota members deserve better.
Cerisis represents the old fashioned stand in line for office DFL. The DFL that has been getting its head handed to it in election after election in a state that should be as blue as the waters. Nelson-Pallmeyer is a part of the newer DFL of activists and serious Leftists and as such is a dangerous entity in the out-state or non-ultra-liberal parts of the state in the General Election. Both have serious presentation problems in media.
Cerisi’s only claim to the Senator position is he ran a large law office… and he has been a DFL stalwart. Note enough steak and no sizzle there.
Nelson-Pallmeyer is a stalwart DFLer with impeccable liberal credentials plus as a policy wonk really understands the issues. But up against Coleman he will be handed his head on a platter. Too much steak and not enough sizzle.
That leaves us with Al Franken, small warts and all. A smart presentable candidate that can hand Coleman his head on a platter in the general. A leader people can get behind with the right amount of both steak and sizzle. All the whining on this thread is trumped by the fact that Franken can win in the general.
That assumes Franken can make it to the general. To start with, getting an endorsement for Franken would require mass arm twisting and probably no small amount of petty bribery (“wanna be a senate staffer?”). The repugs then start presenting their Al Franken film festival in 30 second spots several times a day- they’ve got so much material they won’t even have to wait until october. Noting Al’s temper, they’ll send out their hacks to bait him on the campaign trail with video cameras close by. It’ll all come to a head when a week before the election Al drops out before the Central Committee throws him off the ballot. Try putting together a winning US Senate campaign in a week…
What the h#&* is that post about? How very strange.
It is very sad to me that SEIU would endorse who they think is going to win over a better candidate who best represents their members (and all of our) interests. Ironically, it is Jack who can beat Norm Coleman not Al.
US Senators really have no patronage to distribute. Now, Governors on the other hand…
You have got to be a complete political idiot to think that Minnesota has not already seen the Al Franken Film Festival. Hell, we were proud of the St. Louis Park boy who was on Saturday Night Live. Now we are proud of his bringing the funny to politics. It is DFL morons who lost every election they even try at because they put a stiff like Cerisi or Hatch or any of the other stand in line for your office politicians.
Minnesotans are not policy wonks who even know who runs the party… they’ll vote for Al once all those photos of Norman sucking face with Bush get out.
I need to correct a mistake I made earlier. I left the impression in an earlier comment that Javier Morillo was the driving force behind Al Franken getting the SEIU endorsement. I have it on good authority that my impression was false. That particular blame lies entirely elsewhere in SEIU. My apologies to Javier.
On the other hand, I also found out that Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer was walking the picket line yesterday with the striking security workers. Just as Jack had earlier been in solidarity with the striking university clerical workers.