Al Franken Joins Minnesota Union Members Revved Up for Campaign

U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken joined delegates at the Minnesota AFL-CIO convention.

Barb Kucera, editor of Workday Minnesota, sends us this report from the Minnesota AFL-CIO convention in Duluth.   

Union members from across the state who gathered for the biennial convention of the Minnesota AFL-CIO are focused on one goal: electing worker-friendly candidates in the November elections.

More than 500 delegates representing 300,000 working Minnesotans are attending the three-day convention at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. On Sunday, they heard from several elected officials and labor-endorsed candidate Al Franken. Franken, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party-endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate, told the delegates:

If you’re ready for a change, I need you to stand with me.

Franken is running against Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, who was elected in 2002 to fill the seat held by the late Paul Wellstone.

Franken talked about meeting a retired Iron Range steelworker who was struggling to make ends meet after his pension was slashed by a large corporation. The steelworker said he didn’t feel that elected officials like Coleman were aware of his plight. As Franken said:

The biggest difference between me and Norm Coleman is in who we think a senator is supposed to work for. I think I’m supposed to work for that retired steelworker in Eveleth. I think I’m supposed to work for the middle-class mom who is worried sick because her daughter is in a class with too many kids and they don’t have the financial means to send her to college. I think that I’m supposed to be fighting for the hundreds of thousands of homeowners in this state who’ve seen the equity in their homes fall apart.

Norm Coleman thinks being a senator is a game [and] accepts hundreds of thousands in checks from corporate special interests.

Then he comes back to Minnesota and pretends it never happened.

Franken struck a familiar theme at the convention: Republicans like Norm Coleman and presidential candidate John McCain supported and will continue the disastrous economic policies of the Bush administration.

Rep. James Oberstar, who represents Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, blasted McCain for repeatedly backing proposals to turn Social Security over to Wall Street investment brokers.

Social Security has never missed a payment. It has never bounced a check and it has paid benefits to over 400 million of our fellow citizens. It’s there. You can count on it. But you can’t count on McCain.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a DFLer, urged union members to work hard to elect Franken and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

This is a grassroots movement, not just to win the election but also to get something done in Washington.

With a Democratic president and Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, progress can be made in many areas, including renewable energy, job creation, infrastructure and benefits for military veterans.

Playing off recent candidate and media comments, she noted:

The people of this country are ready for a change. You read my lipstick: They’re ready for a change.

Delegates will put the words into action Monday when they adjourn the convention to join in a citywide doorknock on behalf of labor-endorsed candidates. To turn around America, we will reach out to union families in Duluth as part of the union movement’s Labor 2008 political mobilization.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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