Labor supporter: Dean ignored pleas to quit

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

2004 New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON -- One of Howard Dean's most powerful labor supporters, Gerald W. McEntee, said on Thursday that he had decided that Dean was "nuts" shortly before he withdrew his support for Dean's candidacy and begged him to quit the race to avoid a humiliating defeat.

McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, defended his decision to abandon Dean's campaign, saying he told Dean that he did not want to spend another $1 million of his union's money "in order to get him a couple of extra points in Wisconsin."

"I have to vent," McEntee, the often blunt leader of the nation's largest public service union, said in a leisurely interview in his office here. "I think he's nuts."

McEntee said he reached his assessment of Dean after watching him in what he described as a series of halting campaign appearances in Iowa, leading up to his shouted concession speech. He said he did not believe Dean understood how substantial his decline was after that and that he was stunned when Dean did not bow to pressure from labor unions to pull out earlier this month.

"I go to Burlington, and I meet with him," McEntee said. "I'm telling you, I threw more ice water on his head in about 25 minutes than probably he has ever had. And I said: `Don't do Wisconsin, OK? Don't go in.' I told him to get out. I said you can't win."

"He said he's still going into Wisconsin," McEntee continued. "I said, `We're not. We're off the train. If you think I'm going to spend $1 million to get you another point after this election is over, you're crazy. We're saving the money to do it against George Bush.' "

A spokesman for Dean, Jay Carson, said that McEntee's attacks on Dean could endanger the party's chances of defeating Bush. "All Democrats have to be united to win this election," he said. "This kind of personal attack is not going to help us beat George W. Bush."

The remarks by McEntee came the day after Dean ended his candidacy. In the speech Dean made on Wednesday, he went out of his way to praise the other two big unions that had joined McEntee in endorsing Dean, the Service Employees International Union and the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, for sticking with him. McEntee bristled at the suggestion that his decision to abandon Dean was disloyal.

"We didn't feel and don't feel now that our responsibility was to Howard Dean," he said. "Our responsibility was to our people and to the people who we represent."

McEntee, who flirted with endorsing John Kerry and retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark before settling on Dean, said his union was probably going to sit it out for a while.

"At this point, there's no way we're going to endorse anybody," he said. "I think we need a rest. Maybe in an asylum."

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Well, at least one guy has realized what the rest of the real world knew already.

(The above is courtesy of the Houston Comical, er, Chronicle)

 

I don't think it was much of a surprise to me.I think he should have quit a couple of weeks ago.He's history IMO.

 

Let's see. He is running for President of a party and blames the ex-VP for the 'kiss of death' support, the ex-President won't support any of them including Dean and Kerry for fear that we might remember what it's like having a Democrat running around the Whitehouse with his pants around his ankles, and his party members including his Labor leader friend thinks he's nuts, what's new?