Labor to Repeat Early Candidate Selection in ’88

Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale and leaders of the AFL-CIO met Monday and agreed that the labor federation should stick to its political course despite the devastating defeat in November’s presidential election of Mondale, the candidate labor endorsed.

In the first executive council meeting since the election, the union leaders and the former vice president said that the best hope for the nation and the Democratic Party is for the party to reforge its traditional liberal-labor-minorities coalition, even though some elements of the party believe that a major restructuring is in order in the wake of the election defeat.

Plan Endorsement

Mondale and the labor executives agreed also that the federation should make a pre-primary endorsement in the 1988 presidential race, as it did, for the first time, when it endorsed Mondale in the 1984 campaign.

The federation’s endorsement of Mondale has been credited with being the major force behind his winning the Democratic nomination. But the action has also been attacked as a significant factor in his defeat by those who contend that Mondale was perceived as a “captive” of organized labor.

“I thought it was a bad rap,” Mondale said. “These are working men and woman. They are part of this country. They never asked me for a thing except for justice, for the enforcement of the laws. I’m content.”

More to blame for his defeat, Mondale said, was his “own failings in grappling with the television medium, which is clearly vital in forming public opinion today.”

AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland said: “A candidate in this country will have a difficult time unless he gains mastery of the television tube that really dominates public and political discourse today.

Using the ‘Tube’

“If you don’t have proper access to that tube and if you don’t know how to use it exceedingly well, you’re going to be at a serious disadvantage.”

Interviews with individual council members made clear that they not only intend to make an early presidential endorsement in 1988, and thus again be a major factor in the party’s presidential selection, but that they intend to continue to be a major force within the Democratic Party between now and the 1988 election.

Kirkland, addressing a press conference after a meeting of the 35-member executive council, said that President Reagan has started his second term by “thrusting on us again the central public issue of our time: the role of government in a modern society.”

‘Coddling’ Business

Kirkland charged that it is “quite clear that this Administration believes the government role should be confined pretty much to the raising of armies and the coddling of commercial enterprises.”

Beyond that, he said, the Administration wants to “dismantle the role of the federal government in our life . . . and, to achieve that goal, it has created a remarkably efficient mechanism,” namely a massive budget deficit combined with “a hard line against tax increases and an insistence that the one sector of public spending that should remain inviolate is the defense budget.”

The union leaders unanimously adopted a resolution denouncing the Reagan Administration for charging the presidents of three large federal and postal labor unions with violating the Hatch Act because they worked on behalf of Mondale’s election. They were told that, unless they resign their federal jobs or retire by next Tuesday, they will be prosecuted.

On Leave From Jobs

All three have been on leave from federal jobs for at least 10 years, and they charge that the Reagan Administration has “stretched the law (that prohibits federal workers from campaigning, raising funds, distributing political literature or seeking office) far beyond all rational limits.”

The AFL-CIO resolution declared that “the obvious intent of these prosecutions is not to protect the integrity of the public service but to limit the right of the leaders of the largest unions in the federal sector to serve their members.”