Big Win for Franken

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a front page story, "Labor Makes Big Comeback in ‘08 Races." That’s certainly true in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race. It’s a story we’ve been tracking for months, in A Tale of Two AFSCMEs, A Tale, Chapter Two and A Tale, Chapter Three.

This week, Education Minnesota endorsed DFL U.S. Senate contender Al Franken over Mike Ciresi,
the other top contender in the race. The endorsement of the state’s
biggest union (70,000-plus members) is huge. Add the endorsement of
AFCME Council 5, at 43,000 members, and now you’re talking super huge.
These top two state unions are highly motivated, and that will be
tough, but not insurmountable, to the Ciresi team. Ciresi earned the
endorsement of AFCME Council 65, which boasts 11,000-plus members.

The inside buzz is that Eliot Seide, AFSCME Council 5’s
executive director, orchestrated the significant pre-February 5
precinct caucus endorsement by Education Minnesota (we were told months
ago Education Minnesota would stay out of it like they usually do in
heated DFL battles). Seide says he wasn’t involved, "We respect our
friends in Education Minnesota and we didn’t have anything to do with
the timing or ‘the who’ of the endorsement. Of course, we are very
happy with the outcome of their endorsement process." The Franken team,
via Communications Director Andy Barr, also denies engineering an early DFL endorsement that most DFL insiders didn’t expect to happen.

We suspect the Education Minnesota endorsement had a lot to do with the group’s new president, Tom Dooher.
So we asked him. According to Dooher, Education Minnesota did have an
internal conversation about whether or not to endorse and ultimately
decided to endorse "simply because we wanted to be influential at the
beginning of the campaign and get our members to the caucuses." Why
Franken? "We felt that he has strength in understanding our issues and
that he would be a good U.S. Senator," says Dooher.

Both Education Minnesota and AFSCME Council 5 have major plans in the
works to turn out their members for Franken next month. These include
training videos for the caucus novice, direct mail and the all
important phone banks. We also bet (but did not ask) that Seide is
extraordinarily motivated to deliver for his guy, given the earlier
dustup between the two.

Besides the state’s top two unions, Franken is also cashing in on all
the legislative fundraisers he attended the last election cycle.
Whether those candidates won or lost doesn’t matter. Franken made
personal contacts and started relationships with DFL fundraiser
attendees who are highly likely DFL caucus goers. [We were delighted to
learn that Franken heavily relied on the latest edition of Politics in Minnesota: The Directory
for his statewide travel.] Ciresi has been countering for months by
having his supporters host house parties all over the state. We wrote about that.

For Ciresi, Franken’s not so funny, anymore.

Two sidebars:

1. One of Education Minnesota’ national parents, the American Federation of Teachers, endorsed Hillary Clinton
for President very early in the race (the other parent, the National
Education Association did not endorse anyone, and neither did Education
Minnesota) as did national AFSCME. That means all the MN caucus
activity for Franken bodes well for the former first lady.

2. AFSCME Council 5 is also shopping precinct caucus resolutions this
year calling for — surprise! — investments in transportation and
affordable quality health care and no more privatization of public
services.