AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was not enthusiastic about throwing his organization's support to eventual Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, according to hacked emails released by WikiLeaks.
Despite pressure from the Clinton campaign and from other unions, Trumka did not announce an endorsement until June, when she already had secured the nomination, The Washington Free Beacon wrote in its reporting on the emails hacked from campaign chairman John Podesta's Gmail account.
Trumka in February said the AFL-CIO would stay neutral in the primary race between Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders until at least two-thirds of its member unions supported one candidate or the other.
Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, led an effort for the nomination that drew young supporters and was a thorn in Clinton's side till the end.
Clinton labor outreach director Nikki Budzinski emailed top Clinton staff Feb. 17 the vote was "very damn near close to 60%" and that efforts would be made to have other unions put pressure on Trumka to move toward Clinton.
"Sanders will never receive AFL-CIO endorsement; it's impossible," Budzinski wrote. "We should let the affiliates that have endorsed speak to how they feel about the AFL-CIO silence on this (which I don't think will be positive for the AFL-CIO)."
The campaign already had gotten an Iowa AFL-CIO chapter to reverse course after its spokesman criticized Clinton in an Mother Jones article.
"There is a lot of Iowa AFL-CIO in this article that is pro-Bernie. Lee Saunders called Trumka today with AFSCME Council 61 President Danny Homan and informed him that AFSCME (the largest AFL-CIO union in the state of Iowa) is withholding all per capita indefinitely in the state of Iowa," Budzinski wrote Feb. 1. "The Iowa AFL-CIO printed a retraction of their statements in the article today."
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