Tick, tick, tick, Culinary will finally pick

Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Culinary Workers Local 226, Nevada’s largest and most politically active union, had hoped the New Hampshire primary would provide some clarity to its tortured presidential endorsement process. It didn’t.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton’s victory over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday - despite polling that suggested Obama was comfortably leading on election day - leaves officials of the Culinary’s international parent Unite Here with a tough choice: Endorse Clinton, the early front-runner and leader in Nevada, or Obama, whose Iowa victory propelled him to threaten Clinton in New Hampshire, a state she had figured was a lock.

With Obama’s surge in New Hampshire a double-digit lead in some polls several media reports, including a dispatch from Tim Russert on NBC’s “Today Show,” stated as fact that he had sewn up the Culinary endorsement.

Tuesday night, a revived Clinton’s camp weighed in strongly.

“I hope the decision hasn’t been made, and we continue to make the case that Sen. Clinton is ready to lead from Day One,” said Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid, chairman of Clinton’s Nevada campaign and son of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Moments after Clinton was declared winner in New Hampshire, Reid said he hadn’t yet called Unite Here, the parent of the Culinary. He then he held up his cell phone and announced, “but I plan to.”

Officials with Obama’s Nevada campaign could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.

Labor leaders will announce Unite Here’s decision at a news conference this morning at the Culinary’s Las Vegas headquarters.

The coveted endorsement of the 60,000-strong union of casino and hotel workers will give the chosen candidate an immediate and considerable boost in the run-up to the state’s Jan. 19 caucuses while presenting a significant challenge to his or her chief rival. The Clinton and Obama campaigns have said for a year that they have been building organizations that can win Nevada without the union’s help.

John Edwards’ campaign had been holding out hope the former North Carolina senator’s strong relationships with the leadership of international parent Unite Here combined with a strong New Hampshire finish would tip the balance for him. Edwards has lagged behind Obama and Clinton in building the precinct-level organization in Nevada needed to win the caucuses.

Seventy-five of his Iowa organizers began arriving here this week to increase the size and scope of his campaign’s statewide operation.

The endorsement comes after months of speculation and a heated internal debate between Culinary and Unite Here officials.

Bruce Raynor, co-president of Unite Here, told The Wall Street Journal in late August Edwards was his favorite candidate and the union would endorse someone soon. At that time, however, the Culinary, the international’s largest local, was in the midst of citywide contract negotiations and had been saying its attention was trained on the talks, not the presidential campaign.

In fact, the Culinary continued to signal it could make its own endorsement on its own timeline until last month, when Unite Here announced it would make a universal endorsement in early January, likely after the Iowa caucuses. That decision, it said, would include the Culinary. Then, as reporters awaited an announcement in the wake of Obama’s decisive Iowa victory, a media blackout effectively fell over the union’s Las Vegas headquarters. The following day, without its usual fanfare, Culinary quietly announced it would wait until after the New Hampshire primary.

Privately, Culinary officials have groused about news accounts connecting Edwards with the international union’s leadership, insisting all the Democratic candidates have received equal consideration. The campaigns agree but say they’ve picked up on the tension with Unite Here. The international freed its affiliates in the Midwest to support Edwards in Iowa.

Unite Here’s executive committee was to hold a conference call to discuss the decision Tuesday night, after the New Hampshire primary, according to union spokeswoman Amanda Cooper.

The committee has 12 members, including Co-Presidents Raynor and John Wilhelm, who ran the Culinary Union in Las Vegas before taking his post in the international. Las Vegas Culinary Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor is one of 10 executive vice presidents on the committee.

If the union goes with Obama, the Culinary would instantly pair its highly regarded, aggressive field program with a campaign organization Obama officials have said mirrors the one that carried the candidate to victory in Iowa and produced record turnout there. Since November the Culinary has been educating and training its members on the ins and outs of the caucuses. Among its efforts: going door-to-door to register members to vote, hosting caucus training sessions twice a day at its Las Vegas headquarters, and running a direct-mail campaign.

The reason for the feverish candidate courting is clear: From the outset, the union held out the promise of delivering its members en masse in a contest that is expected to draw low turnout in a state that has never caucused in a significant way.

Still, the Culinary, which has delighted all year in its image as kingmaker, faces the question of whether its organizational tools will be diminished by waiting until just 10 days before the Nevada contest.

The union also runs the risk of looking like a fair weather fan, especially after putting the candidates through a series of steps to qualify for its endorsement.

All three leading Democratic campaigns have expressed frustration over what appeared to be a union hedging its bets.

Besides boosting a candidate in Nevada, the Unite Here nod would prove helpful elsewhere. The union represents more than 450,000 hotel, restaurant, apparel and laundry workers nationwide and has significant memberships in California and New York, two delegate-rich states that vote in the mega-primary on Feb. 5.