Union Leaders Shop Again for Candidates

On the night before the Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses, seven big rigs driven by Teamsters circled the Renaissance Savery Hotel in Des Moines, air horns punctuating the engines’ full-throated message in a raucous, rumbling reminder of organized labor’s political presence.

But the gleaming trailers, driven there by union locals as distant as Colorado and Ohio, were empty -- and so, too, the implied promise of labor’s muscle in the presidential primary campaign.

Twenty-one industrial unions supported Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, whose rally at the Des Moines hotel had drawn the 18-wheelers. But two days later, he dropped out of the race after finishing fourth in Iowa. The nation’s largest union, the Service Employees International Union, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, gave an early endorsement to Howard Dean. He has yet to win a primary contest.

The result: With the Democratic Party speeding toward anointment of a nominee to oppose President Bush, some of the most powerful unions are again shopping for a favorite. And the remaining candidates are renewing their courtship.

Over the last several days, Dean has spoken by telephone with the senior union leaders who had supported him but had grown skittish over the future of his candidacy. Other labor leaders are weighing their options.

Seven union leaders, including James P. Hoffa, president of the Teamsters, who had backed Gephardt were hoping to meet today with Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, who won contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as five of the seven state contests on Tuesday.

The same group of unions, assembled in the ad hoc Alliance for Economic Justice, met with Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina on Tuesday.

Now viewed as the front-runner, Kerry is raking in a number of the larger unions that had not yet made commitments.

The American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.3-million union members, announced its support for the senator from Massachusetts on Wednesday. Earlier in the week, the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Assn. and the National Treasury Employees Union endorsed him.

A Kerry spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, said the seven international unions were initially in Kerry’s corner. But, she said, the campaign was beginning to reach out for union support, which “is critical, particularly in a general election.”

Members of the International Assn. of Firefighters, in distinctive yellow and black T-shirts, were virtually the only union members standing behind him at campaign events.

Until Kerry’s victory in the Iowa caucuses -- and Gephardt’s quick exit from the campaign -- unions had focused their attention on Gephardt and Dean.

Andrew L. Stern, the president of the service employees union, issued a new statement of support for the former Vermont governor, emphasizing that he was still working for Dean’s nomination even as reports circulated about his concern in the wake of his candidate’s repeated losses.

Citing Dean’s record dealing with healthcare issues as both a doctor and governor, Stern said: “As all of the other candidates in the race for president have adopted Howard Dean’s message, the members of SEIU continue to believe that Howard Dean is the right messenger.”

Stern said he would campaign for Dean before Saturday’s Democratic Party caucuses in Michigan. He said union members were working on Dean’s behalf there and in Washington, which also has caucuses on Saturday; Maine, which has caucuses on Sunday; and Wisconsin, which hold its primary on Feb. 17.

But Stern acknowledged his members were anxious.

“People want to be with a winner,” he said in an interview late last week. “When people lose, they get concerned.”

Surveys of voters leaving polling places Tuesday showed that members of union households were far from united.

In Oklahoma, where they made up 21% of the electorate, they were nearly evenly divided -- as were all the voters there -- among retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, Edwards and Kerry. In Arizona, 43% of the union vote went to Kerry, 25% to Clark, 13% to Dean and 7% to Edwards.

“They’re all over the place,” said Susan Pinkus, director of the Los Angeles Times Poll.

Leo Troy, a Rutgers University economics professor, predicted that in the end the unions would come together to support Kerry.

But the likely endorsement may mean little -- as Gephardt and Dean have discovered -- because rank-and-file union members are showing little inclination to follow the recommendations of their leaders.

In 2000, when organized labor supported Al Gore’s presidential campaign, George Bush drew the support of 37% of the voters from union households, Troy said.

This year in Iowa, where the unions backing Gephardt and Dean conducted a major drive to get supporters to the polls, the overall vote was roughly 30,000 fewer than the total union membership in the state. Troy cited the statistic as evidence that a union endorsement carried little weight there.

“It tells us,” he said, “that they don’t come out, and when they do come out,” they do not necessarily follow the advice of their leaders.

Otherwise, said Troy, who specializes in organized labor and politics, Gephardt would have finished first in Iowa and the big rigs would have rolled into New Hampshire and each new primary contest as he racked up win after win.

Instead, Gephardt has withdrawn, and the Teamsters are looking for a new candidate.

Times staff writers Nick Anderson and Johanna Neuman contributed to this report.