AFL-CIO Eager to Hit McCain in $53-Million Drive

Posted on Mar 11, 2008

nymag.com

The AFL-CIO isn’t going to wait around for the Democrats to pick a nominee before it starts campaigning against John McCain. The largest union in America plans to spend a record $53 million to make sure the next president isn’t a Republican.

With the leading Democratic candidates exhausting their war chests on each other, surrogates will have to take on McCain, who is already free to begin running a general election campaign.

Wall Street Journal:

The AFL-CIO will rely on one of the oldest strategies in the political playbook: Define your opponent before your opponent defines himself. The labor organization will launch its “McCain Revealed” campaign to paint McCain as anti-worker and to tie him to the economic policies of President Bush. The AFL-CIO, which is an umbrella group for dozens of large national labor unions, has tailored messages about McCain for each of its member unions. Members of the American Federation of Teachers will get information about where McCain stands on education, for example.

With more than 13 million union members and family members, the AFL-CIO talks directly to more voters than nearly any organization outside of the presidential campaigns and the national political parties. The AFL-CIO didn’t endorse any Democrat in the primaries. Other unions have split their support for Obama and Clinton. The $53 million that the AFL-CIO plans is a record for the union. The money will be spent communicating an anti-McCain message directly to union members and households through mailings, visits to worksites and door knocking.

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