Organized labor and the Edwards Campaign

In order to court union support and the working class vote, Edward recruited talent with connection to unions. Several key strategists on the Edwards Team have long standing relationships with labor organizers and unions; in addition to Paul Blank, who worked for a union on an anti Wal-Mart campaign (as I stated in my previous blog posting), the senior advisor to Edwards, Chris Chafe, was at one time the chief of staff for Unite Here (http://www.theatlantic.com/, 02/14/08). Unite Here is a textile union with large membership numbers.

Chris Kofinis, who worked on the Edwards campaign in communications, also worked with Blank on the anti Wal-Mart campaign. John Edwards’s anti-corporate, pro working class, message was designed to appeal to the average working class American; and he hired people who new how to get the message out to that specific demographic.

So what happened? How come this message did not translate into pledged delegates? Well, according to Edwards the media is to blame. John Edwards claims that his campaign was completely avoided by mainstream media in favor of the two “celebrity” candidates: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (http://www.truthsout.org/, 2/14/08).

The Edwards campaign had trouble early in 2007 in the Blogosphere; two staff members responsible for campaign blogs resigned under accusations of anti-Catholic remarks. Melissa McEwan and Amanda Marcotte both resigned with in days of each other, due to pressure from conservative groups because of alleged anti-Catholic remarks (Mike Baker, Associated Press, 2/14/07). President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Bill Donohue, called on Edwards to fire both of the blogers, but they resigned instead.

Jason Meyerson