Edwards secures support of nearly 3 million union members

Democratic presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) secured a massive bloc of labor supporters Monday, winning the individual endorsements of 10 state councils of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The Edwards campaign announced the key backing of the Iowa state SEIU council Monday morning, and by the end of the afternoon, the campaign announced that its candidate now enjoys the support of unions representing almost 3 million members. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) also got in on the act, winning the state council backings of Illinois and Indiana.

{mosads}When SEIU’s national leadership said it would not make a national endorsement, many analysts saw the decision as a major blow to Edwards, who has pushed harder than the rest of the field for the backing.

Edwards campaign officials said Monday that their Democratic rivals, Sens. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), “worked extraordinarily hard to block” the national endorsement behind the strengths of their respective states’ chapters.

“Other campaigns … pulled out all the stops to try to prevent this from happening,” Edwards’s campaign manager, former Rep. David Bonior (D-Mich.), said.

Bonior said Monday that following SEIU’s national rally last month, almost 60 percent of the 1,500 members present voted to endorse Edwards, but Clinton and Obama still were able to prevent it on a national level.

The campaign stressed throughout the day that SEIU’s endorsement rules prevent state councils from working on a candidate’s behalf in a state where that council has endorsed another candidate. If the New York council were to endorse Clinton, for example, it would not be allowed to “engage or work” in Iowa because that state council is backing Edwards, according to the campaign.

Edwards spokesman Chris Kofinis said in a conference call Monday that the Iowa endorsement is a “huge defeat” for Clinton because it showed that her nomination is not “inevitable.”

The Iowa state council was joined later in the day by nine other states, including member-rich California, which has 656,000 members, and battleground states like Michigan and Ohio. Edwards also won the endorsement of the state councils of Oregon, Washington, West Virginia, Minnesota, Montana and Idaho.

The crown jewel of Monday’s endorsements, however, was the key first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa, where organization is king.

Although there are only 2,000 SEIU members in Iowa, campaign officials said they could make a crucial difference on caucus night, convincing friends and family to attend and caucus on Edwards’s behalf.

“John has worked very hard to earn this endorsement,” Bonior said. “The commitment here is deep. It’s not a surface commitment.”

SEIU endorsed former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D) in 2004, only to see its candidate lose both Iowa and New Hampshire.