WASHINGTON — In the wake of Tuesday’s primary election results, it was open warfare yesterday between the White House and some of the country’s biggest labor unions — once President Obama’s closest allies.
The political director for the Service Employees International Union, whose 850,000 US members were crucial in Obama’s election machine two years ago, pointedly said that the union will not fall into line behind several Democratic nominees, including Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and two congressmen from New York.
SEIU’s Jon Youngdahl accused Reps. Michael McMahon (D-SI) and Mike Arcuri (D-Utica) and a handful of others of abandoning “the needs of working families once elected” and vowed that “the labor movement is going to be at the side of those voters who demand change.”
The slap at McMahon and Arcuri stems from their opposition to this year’s Democratic health-care bill.
Youngdahl’s pointed comments yesterday came after an increasingly harsh and public spat between the White House and several labor unions — which could harm some Demo- cratic candidates in November.
Moments after incumbent Blanche Lincoln claimed victory Tuesday night despite a massive effort by labor to unseat her, a White House official called politico.com to rub their noses in it.
“Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise,” the official fumed.
“If even half of that total had been well targeted and applied in key House races across the country, that could have made a real difference in November.”
Labor officials were taken aback by the comments from the White House.
“Last year, our members in Arkansas approached us with their outrage that their sitting senator seemed to have lost sight of the change working families were asking for,” Youngdahl said of the White House-backed Lincoln.
“We started this 12-week campaign knowing it was an uphill climb — whenever anyone takes on Wall Street and Big Oil they’ve a formidable task ahead — but our members were asking the right questions and we nearly pulled it off.”