Green-shirted state employees at the Washington State Labor Council’s endorsement conference successfully pushed for the council representing 400,000 public and private workers to sit out in some races where unions don’t see a champion.
“The state employees really held their ground,” council spokeswoman Kathy Cummings said. “This was one of the longest and most contentious COPE (Committee on Political Education) conventions that we’ve had in a long time.”
Stung by the failure of a top priority in last year’s legislative session, the council vowed to target its money to worthy candidates instead of routing it through Democratic Party leaders.
This year’s election is the first test of the council’s new political committee, called Don’t Invest in More Excuses (DIME), and its redesigned endorsements process.
The question for labor is: Back Democrats across the board, including the ones with the toughest fights on their hands, to help the party keep its majorities in the House and Senate? Or single out only a few proven friends?
State employees are particularly set against spreading money out among Democrats. Two rounds of budget cuts, including layoffs and furloughs, have left them unhappy with many legislators.
“They went after state employees, against our lunch-box issues,” said Craig Gibelyou, a Western State Hospital nurse. So he and other members of the Washington Federation of State Employees objected to endorsing legislators who “threw us under the bus,” he said.
The council made fewer snubs than the federation, which last month endorsed just 16 incumbent Democrats for re-election to the Legislature, along with three Republicans. Democrats hold 61 House and 31 Senate seats.
But the council declined to endorse some South Sound Democrats who face potentially tough campaigns, like Rep. Troy Kelley of Tacoma, Sen. Derek Kilmer of Gig Harbor, Sen. Claudia Kauffman of Kent, Sen. Tracey Eide of Federal Way, Rep. Larry Seaquist of Gig Harbor, Rep. Dawn Morrell of Puyallup and Rep. Christopher Hurst of Enumclaw.
It did not, however, endorse the Republicans running against those candidates. And it issued a rare anti-endorsement of Kelley’s opponent, attorney Steve O’Ban.
The candidates still have a chance to regain unions’ love, with more endorsements coming in August at the council’s constitutional convention in Tacoma. An endorsement requires a two-thirds vote of delegates there.
Pierce County Central Labor Council President Vance Lelli predicted most snubbed candidates would return to the fold by August.
“They’ll make their amends. They’ll figure out their problems,” said Lelli, a longshoreman from Tacoma.
Lelli was among those pushing Saturday for broader support of Democrats. He’s not thrilled with everything the Legislature has done, like the killing of a worker-privacy bill in 2009 that helped lead to the new targeted funding strategy, but he was arguing to fellow union members they can’t go door-to-door urging voters to support one Democrat in a district and ignore the others.
Some of the moderate Democrats who voted against their party’s tax increases, which much of labor supported as a way to avoid more drastic budget cuts, were passed over for endorsements.
Seaquist came to the convention Saturday hoping to change minds. Instead, it was the first time he failed to win the council’s support, though he points to his endorsements by Pierce and Kitsap county-level labor councils. He stands by the votes he took.
“We weren’t really helping the working men and women by passing that tax package,” Seaquist said.
A South Sound Republican, maverick Rep. Tom Campbell of Roy, who faces a challenge from within his own party, also won an endorsement.
U.S. Congressional endorsements
The Washington State Labor Council also endorsed candidates for Congress on Saturday, all Democrats:
• For U.S. Senate, Sen. Patty Murray.
• For U.S. House, Reps. Norm Dicks, Jay Inslee, Rick Larsen, Jim McDermott and Adam Smith, state Sen. Craig Pridemore, Jay Clough and Suzan DelBene.
