AFL-CIO set to unveil ‘McCain Revealed’ campaign

The AFL-CIO will announce Wednesday a detailed campaign aimed at derailing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain’s (Ariz.) bid to gain traction with union households.

Karen Ackerman, the labor organization’s political director, is scheduled to brief reporters on a teleconference Wednesday about the “McCain Revealed” campaign, “a major new campaign aimed at exposing Sen. John McCain’s anti-worker record and his ties to the failed economic policies of President Bush.”

{mosads}A release from the AFL-CIO said the campaign “will be a broad, multi-pronged effort to ensure more than 13 million working people across the country know exactly where McCain stands on the issues they care about, such as trade, jobs, healthcare and Social Security.”

Calling the effort a “central component of the AFL-CIO’s largest grassroots mobilization in history,” the union group noted in the release that it has devoted a “record” $53.4 million to the 2008 race and has not yet endorsed a Democratic candidate.

Ackerman will announce which states will be a priority in the campaign and what timetable the group envisions.

The McCain campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but it can expect more attacks comparing the senator to President Bush.

Following the lead of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the New Hampshire state party released a video of the two men Tuesday in anticipation of a scheduled McCain campaign stop Wednesday in Exeter, N.H. The ad, called “Two Ducks in a Row,” features pictures of Bush and McCain together and says, “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”

The purpose of McCain’s trip, which will include a town hall-style meeting, is to thank the voters who gave McCain his first primary win on the way to clinching the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination.

But state Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley said he isn’t sure why McCain “is bothering to ‘thank’ New Hampshire voters.”

“He is going to have to look somewhere else for support in November, because Granite Staters don't want a third Bush term," Buckley said in a statement.