AFT Backs Hillary!
by art3, Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 09:53:30 AM EDT
The AFT this morning decided toendorse Hillary Clinton for President. Ambinder is reporting this on theatlantic.com. Also MSNBC is reporting this now as well and an official statement isdue out soon. ALthough not a surprise, still a great boost from eudcators and will come in handy in big union states like California which has powerful teacher union organizations etc.. More here for now!
03 Oct 2007 12:31 pm HAMPTON, NEW HAMPSHIRE -- Ex-Sen. John Edwards was late for Winnacunnet elementary school this morning and he didn't even get a hall pass. Cosmic justice: on the day that Edwards was set to speak to the National Education Associations"School to White House" team here, the American Federation of Teachers voted to endorse Sen. HIllary Clinton, a fact that will almost certainly appear in every newspaper account of the first half of the day. (A union source says the vote for Hillary was "overwhelming" -- even though Illinois and New Mexico are well represented on the AFT's board. Now -- since the largest AFT affiliate is New York City's United Federation of Teachers, the fact of the endorsement is not too surprising.)More Out from AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The American Federation of Teachers backed Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign Wednesday. The 1.4 million-member union said it would immediately begin a program to mobilized voters in support of Clinton across the country. AFT represents school employees including teachers in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade and has more than 3,000 local affiliates and 43 state affiliates. It is affiliated international union of the AFL-CIO. The union's executive council chose the New York senator after meeting with seven Democratic candidates. No Republican candidates accepted the union's invitation to participate in the process.
Clinton rival Barack Obama supports performance-based merit pay in public schools. Teacher unions have said linking their pay to their students' test scores would be unfair to those instructing kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.see: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CLINTON_TEACHERS?SITE=WDUN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT









22 Comments