Culinary Union can’t muscle win - Poor showing blamed on late endorsement

[Herman Munster]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jan/20/m-culinary/

Before dawn, the Culinary Union’s army of organizers gathered in the large second-story hall of its Las Vegas headquarters. Members lined up for coffee and doughnuts, a kind of last meal before making the final push for the union’s endorsed candidate, Sen. Barack Obama.

Their organizing packets contained a flier that read: “Culinary Members Are Sticking Together! Culinary Members’ Voices Will Be Heard!”

The members were heard -- but not in the way the union’s leadership had hoped.

Sen. Hillary Clinton won seven of the nine at-large caucus sites on the Strip, sites her husband had derided as giving disproportionate influence to the 60,000-strong union. She won Nevada by 6 percentage points.

In short, the Culinary didn’t deliver.

“I’m not going to make excuses,” said Culinary Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor. “You have to give credit to the Clinton campaign. She won.”

The ramifications will be felt for some time, as the union now faces a divided membership and perceptions of lost clout after months of carefully cultivating its image as Nevada’s political kingmaker. (Another line from the flier boasted, “Culinary Members Will Elect Barack Obama!”)

To be sure, the union is still fresh off bargaining victories, and has the upper hand as it now negotiates a new contract with the troubled owners of the Tropicana. The union will still be a powerful player, but the loss is real.

Union officials are doing a good deal of soul-searching, analyzing what led to a fairly calamitous result.

The frustrations were obvious when Kevin Kline, the Culinary’s staff director, barred a Sun reporter and photographer from what was billed earlier in the day as a union victory party, an event to which the Sun had been invited. “We just need a few hours to get our heads around this,” he said.

First and foremost, Clinton’s overwhelming victory on the Strip demonstrates the Culinary’s endorsement did not reflect the wishes of the union’s rank and file. And Culinary members said as much to Sun reporters who attended each of the nine caucus sites.

Clinton dominated Obama among Hispanics, winning by a 2-1 margin, according to exit polls.

With such a large Hispanic population in the union predisposed to go for Clinton, the Culinary was commencing well behind the starting gates.

On a recent swing through a Hispanic neighborhood, organizer Maria Gomez, accompanied by Culinary President Geoconda Arguello Kline, took two hours to visit three members’ homes. One meeting took an hour.

[sunonmars]

1. So if the members voted for Hillary overwhelmingly

Wouldnt it make sense for them to withdraw their endorsment of Barack Obama and give it to Hillary Clinton as their union members voted.

[Yukari Yakumo]

2. I have a feeling the state's union leadership is going to be given the boot...

Membership went almost completely against who they endorsed,
And the state leadership went against the national leadership's wishes.

Something tells me the leadership is getting the boot at the next union vote.
(Or at least they have a lot of explaining to do.)

[LiberalFighter]

6. Need to check out the procedure they use to endorse

It appears be nothing more than a giantantic local union existing only in Nevada. The Culinary Union does not appear to exist in any other state. If they want to be known as a big player in Nevada they need to change their procedure. That would require having a committee of political activists in each location knowing the pulse of the workers. In addition, having officer delegates or something similar that would vote on endorsements.

[JTFrog]

3. You mean the same candidate who tried to keep them from voting at all won? I'm shocked! No really!

[jbnow]

4. It helped them around the state

They already had commitments from the union workers

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jan/20/how-clinton-hit-pay-dirt/

Aside from heavy turnout, the Clinton camp made another smart strategic move that was aided and abetted by a strategic blunder: Although the Clinton team won’t admit it publicly, the campaign had been working Culinary Union members hard and organizing them for the past year. The effort recognized that because the union was waiting so long to make an endorsement decision (it didn’t come until 10 days ago), the campaign could peel off members and get them committed and working while the union dithered. The result was a surprising victory at seven of the nine special Strip caucus sites.

Most remarkable about this organizational drive is that it required secrecy -- if the Culinary found out, the union would have worked to shut it down.

That seems smart politics but not great if that news spreads. I don't know how campaigns are suppose to work with union members or why they'd have to do it secretly.
Guess they were worried the union endorsement would change the workers minds but it's odd that if they had won they'd have lowered their own level of victory.


What bothers me is that the lie worked

And even though Clinton fared well at the Strip sites, she also benefited from the lawsuit filed to have the sites closed, according to interviews with voters, who expressed anger that Culinary workers -- and by extension, Obama -- were given disproportionate influence in the total delegate count because of the at-large sites.

The claim about delegate allocation wasn’t true, but many voters believed it to be so, which is all that mattered.

Of course since Bill was shown saying it over and over...despite lies about private life people probably wouldn't be expecting him to lie about issues like this.
But hey, it owrked. People believed it.

[Perry Logan]

5. The Obama people will have to increase the number of bullshit accusations they make.