Union organizes Seattle rally for presidential hopeful Dean

By David Postman
Seattle Times chief political reporter

	RALPH RADFORD / AP Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean addresses a campaign rally with Service Employees International Union yesterday in Seattle.
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The event was organized by the Dean campaign and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents 60,000 nursing home, home health-care and other workers in the state.

It looked like a campaign rally, with a big Howard Dean sign overhead, the declaration that the former Vermont governor would be the next president, his attacks on President Bush and, at the end, a crowd of union members surrounding him and linking arms in a victory salute.

But any message of support for Dean was unofficial.

That could change next week. SEIU President Andrew Stern issued a statement yesterday saying that when the executive board meets Thursday, only Dean has a chance to win an endorsement.

"It is becoming clear that the passion of the members lies with Governor Dean, and that ultimately the decision before the board will be to either endorse him or endorse no one," Stern's statement said.

It's a coveted endorsement. The SEIU is now the largest union in the AFL-CIO, both nationally and within Washington state. Unions traditionally provide Democratic candidates with money, volunteers and get-out-the-vote efforts.

"If SEIU were to endorse us, we would have a huge boost to our base," Dean said after his appearance at the New Holly Community Center. "It would be an instant expansion of our base by almost double."

The involvement of SEIU and its 1.6 million members also would help give a different look to crowds of Dean supporters. The campaign has drawn young, mostly white and many upper-middle-class voters.

The union represents some of the lowest-paid union workers, including janitors and home-health-care workers, and many members are immigrants and minorities.

"It would give him a different constituency," said Adam Glickman, a spokesman for the union in Washington state. Looking at the crowd of several hundred union members waiting for the Dean event to begin yesterday, Glickman said, "These are not white, liberal, financially affluent people."

If the Service Employees International Union endorses Dean, it could mean that the national AFL-CIO would be unable to make an endorsement in the Democratic presidential primary because the member unions would be split between Dean and Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt.

Gephardt's campaign played down the potential endorsement.

"They're a big, important union. We wish they were for us," Steve Elmendorf, a top Gephardt campaign official, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "But we have a lot of big, important unions that are for us."

At yesterday's Seattle event, Dean, a doctor, talked about his record as governor when he expanded health care for children and moved thousands of people from nursing homes to home-based care.

In Washington state the Service Employees International Union has been aggressive in pushing to organize home-health-care workers and then lobbying lawmakers to fund the contract. David Rolf, president of SEIU Local 775, said if the union gets involved in the 2004 campaigns it will be equally aggressive.

David Postman: 360-943-9882 or dpostman@seattletimes.com

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