The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the powerful 1.9 million-member group that helped fast-food workers protest for a $15 minimum wage, endorsed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on Tuesday.
“Hillary Clinton has proven she will fight, deliver, and win for working families,” said SEIU president Mary Kay Henry in a press release. “SEIU members and working families across America are part of a growing movement to build a better future for their families, and Hillary Clinton will support and stand with them.” A Clinton campaign press release responded that she was “deeply honored” to earn the union’s support.
It’s a crushing blow for Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who’s run an insurgent campaign against the Democratic front-runner but has sagged in the polls the last few weeks, even relinquishing the slim lead he’d held for months in New Hampshire.
It’s also an ironic blow. In concert with several other unions, the SEIU has campaigned for months to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 for fast-food workers and other service-industry employees. Sanders supports that push, and attended a rally in Washington, D.C. last week to demand the $15 minimum wage for U.S. Capitol workers. Clinton opposes it, in favor of a more modest increase to $12 nationwide.
#share#Clinton has racked up union endorsements in the recent months, earning the support of the American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Only one large union, National Nurses United, is supporting Sanders.
#related#A short statement “on the support Sanders has received from rank-and-file SEIU members” was sent to reporters by the Sanders campaign soon after the news broke of the SEIU’s endorsement. “We are gratified that hundreds of thousands of workers are part of the growing grassroots movement supporting Bernie’s campaign to help working families by raising the minimum wage, providing health care for all, and making college affordable,” wrote Sanders’s communications director Michael Briggs.
— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.