To decide who to endorse, union political staff and volunteer member committees spend hundreds of hours preparing questionnaires and interviewing candidates. We spoke with a handful of labor organizations to find out what their process is.
- AFSCME Local 88 A Political Action Committee sends out questionnaires and interviews candidates, then presents recommendations to general membership for a vote.
- Ironworkers Local 29 A Political Action Committee evaluates questionnaire responses and interviews candidates, with the help of the local’s full-time political coordinator.
- Columbia-Pacific Building Trades Council Candidates for local office seeking endorsement get an invitation to attend the council’s weekly meeting, where they make a pitch and take questions. Delegates may later vote to consider an endorsement, which is voted on by delegates at the following meeting.
- Laborers Local 737 The local’s full-time political director meets with local candidates and educates them about the union and its agenda. Based on data about their campaigns’ level of support. the political director makes a judgement call about which ones have a chance of winning, and those candidates are interviewed by a committee open to any member. The committee makes a recommendation to a PAC Board, which makes the official endorsement.
- AFSCME Local 189 Candidates who approach the union for endorsement are asked to fill out a questionnaire and then interviewed by a volunteer Political Action Committee (PAC) board, which then makes endorsement recommendations to members at the union’s monthly meetings. Members approve or reject the recommendations and can also make and vote on their own endorsement recommendations.
- Southwest Washington Central Labor Council After the candidate filing deadline, a committee of delegates invites all candidates for local office to fill out a questionnaire, follows up with candidate interviews that any union member can attend, and makes endorsement recommendations which are approved by a vote of at least two-thirds of delegates at the organization’s monthly meeting.
