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Politics

Democratic candidates woo labor

Edwards excites crowd with rejection of donations from lobbyists.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 19, 2007

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Democratic presidential candidates argued Saturday night that organized labor is an essential part of the nation's economy whose troubles mirror the deterioration of the middle class way of life.

"The only way to reinvigorate the middle class is to reinvigorate the labor movement," Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware told several hundred union members at a labor forum in eastern Iowa.

For all the candidates, it was one stop in a busy several days leading to a debate this morning in Des Moines. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York leads the Democratic field in national polls and has pulled into a three-way tie in Iowa, where the first votes of the 2008 campaign will be tallied.

One of her chief rivals, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, energized the crowd with his rebuke of Democratic candidates who accept donations from lobbyists. While he has done so at other forums, this time Edwards did not single out Clinton for raising tens of thousands of dollars from lobbyists.

Edwards singled out money tied to drug companies and health insurance companies. "I don't represent those people," he said. "I want to represent you."

Clinton addressed the crowd first. "It was unions that organized workers, that gave them better wages and working conditions and benefits like health care and pensions," she said. "And what is happening now is that the American middle class is under assault."

The crowd thinned out after Edwards' speech, leaving scores of empty seats for Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, who spoke third. The rest of the field spoke to mostly empty rows.

Obama said a Democratic president, backed by organized labor, can change Washington and protect the middle class.

"We need a president ... who is not afraid to mention unions," he said.

Obama plans to attend fewer such multicandidate events in the future, his campaign manager wrote on Obama's 2008 Web site. David Plouffe said the unceasing schedule of debates and candidate forums was proving a distraction.

[Last modified August 19, 2007, 00:04:31]