the more I hear - she BETTER get the offer from Obama!

As a pro-labor person who is watching the SEIU/California Nurses/etc. circus with just disappointment, I'm not hot on Andy Stern - I worry that it'll be seen as "taking sides" in the crazy mess.  At any rate, news articles are claiming he "took himself out of the running," for whatever that is or isn't worth.

I would love to see someone like Maxwell or Geoghegan though, someone committed to issues of both protecting Labor as well as expanding access to Unions, but without worrying about picking someone that will exacerbate the current (and juvenile) rivalries between Unions.

Andy Stern?

Dear God, please not Andy Stern. I understand he endorsed Obama early, but he's the only labor leader able to make John Sweeney look good.

How about somebody who cares about organizing and what organizing means, instead of someone obsessed about their own power? At the very least, you want someone able to work with Congress to pass pro-labor legislation. Stern offers none of that. Bonior and Gephardt might offer some. Not sure what Chavez-Thompson offers. At the AFL-CIO, she's been in charge of whitewashing Sweeney's failures to invest in organizing resources or reaching out to minorities.

Someone aggressive. Someone who takes a side and sticks to it especially in meetings with the polite get-along Establishment. A blunt direct clear speaker, who knows the issues in the heart-break of losing organizing campaigns to unfair tactics. I want a Labor Secretary who is sick and tired of losing to employer-bullies and won't take it anymore. I've been there as a union organizer for workers in a non-profit and those employers were brutal, broke the rules, lied, intimidated their low-pay very kind workers for the homeless and poor women.  

Howard Dean?  ;)

On a more serious note, this is an important cabinet position for me.  Not the most important one, but a VERY important one.  I hope that I will be less nonplussed by this one than by most of the previous ones.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-smit h/a-secretary-of-labor-with_b_148816.htm l

and, yes, her appointment would send a strong signal post-Prop. 8.

If I can't get Trumpka, I'll go with Geohagan.

The person who will illicit the longest and loudest screaming rants from the business wingnuts of how he/she is going to turn America into a socialist society! Then and only then will I be sure we will have the best person for the job!

David Bonior was on the short list of possible SecLabs you quoted.  But he has said several times that he does not want the job and that it should go to someone younger, specifically Maxwell.