Union might not endorse before 2008 primaries

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Given a strong and crowded 2008 Democratic presidential field, a prominent labor leader said on Thursday his union will have a tough time reaching a consensus to make an endorsement before the primaries.

Gerald McEntee, president of the public employees union AFSCME and chairman of the AFL-CIO's political committee, said there was only a 35 percent chance his 1.4 million-member union will agree on a Democrat to back in the 2008 White House race.

"It's going to be hard for us," McEntee said in an interview. "We've got pockets of our union who are significantly behind different candidates. It will be difficult to get a really deep consensus."

He predicted the AFL-CIO, an umbrella federation representing 55 national labor unions, also will have a hard time reaching the two-thirds consensus needed to throw its grass roots and financial muscle behind an individual candidate.

"That's a hard number to get to, particularly this year," McEntee said.

McEntee's American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees does not require a two-thirds consensus, but he said he wants a similarly broad agreement among its leaders before picking a favorite.

The two top contenders, Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, have strong pockets of union support around the country, splintering the vote, he said. Former Sen. John Edwards and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson also have significant support.

McEntee has long been one of labor's most politically influential leaders and is credited with delivering Bill Clinton his first big union endorsement during his 1992 campaign for the White House.

But McEntee said he was determined to avoid a repeat of 2004, when AFSCME was one of the first unions to back the surging Howard Dean -- and eventually had to rescind its endorsement as Dean's candidacy flamed out. 

We learned a good lesson from it," he said. "We didn't drill down into our membership deep enough and far enough to find out who they supported and whether a candidate had the depth of support to endorse."

While he is a friend of Hillary Clinton, he said he is not pushing her candidacy within the union. But he said she has the ability to win over even those opponents who have given her fairly high unfavorable ratings in polls, he said.

Obama also has impressed union leaders, he said, and will be "someone to be reckoned with."

The AFL-CIO has asked member unions, including AFSCME, to hold off on making endorsements until after its executive committee meets in August.

But AFSCME has started researching the Democratic candidates and will sponsor its second forum for candidates before union members next week in Washington.

McEntee said the only way the union will manage to coalesce around a candidate would be "if somebody demonstrates they are out in front in terms of polls and really appear to be able to win the White House."

But one thing he does not expect is former Vice President Al Gore, the unsuccessful 2000 Democratic nominee, to step in.

"I don't think he's going," he said. "He hasn't called me. I would think that if he was thinking about it in some way you'd get a call saying 'Hey, keep your powder dry, I'm thinking about this.'"