OH, MI, MN, WI: AFL-CIO to focus on Midwestern swing states
12:53 PM
On the day that the AFL-CIO announced its endorsement of Barack Obama, Hotline On Call reports that the union "will launch a $53.4M program today in support of Barack Obama, focusing on 24 priority states and more than 13M voters."
And among those 24 states, the top priorities are Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Here's what the Washington Post says about the effort:
The top targets for the AFL-CIO's presidential campaign efforts will be in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota -- the swing states where it has the most members. All except Ohio voted Democratic in 2004, which may make the effort seem defensive in nature, but at the same time, Obama's prospects for picking up a few new states elsewhere mean that he could be in good shape if he, and the unions, can hold the Rust Belt steady for him. In Ohio alone, the coalition says, it expects more than two million voters to be members of AFL households, or of households that belong to Working America, an organization the AFL has created for people who cannot join unions at their workplaces.The AFL-CIO also launched a new Web site called "Meet Barack Obama" today. The site will dovetail with what the union calls "its largest grassroots political mobilization in history", aimed at "mobilizing more than 13 million union voters -- including union members, families of members, retirees and members of the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America."
