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UAW backs Obama

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By Times staff | Friday, November 16, 2007 12:01 AM CST | () comments

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama won the backing of a key Iowa labor group Thursday. The United Auto Workers Region 4 voted to give the Illinois senator its support after meeting all week in Dubuque.

Dennis Williams, the Region 4 director, said that close to 65 percent of the UAW delegation supported Obama. The region includes Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. “This is a good pulse of our membership,” Williams said.

The union has 30,000 members and retirees in Iowa and is particularly influential in the eastern part of the state, where it has a heritage of representing manufacturing workers in places like Waterloo, Dubuque, Cedar Rapids and the Quad-Cities.

“Politics didn’t lead me to working folks — working folks led me to politics,” Obama said in a statement Thursday. “I thank the men and women of UAW Region 4 for their strong support for our campaign to change Washington.”

The union’s convention in Dubuque this week has seen a parade of candidates go before its membership seeking their support.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign responded Thursday by pointing to its own endorsements from labor unions.

Dan Leistikow, a spokesman for John Edwards, said Obama came into the process with a “huge advantage given that about half of the people voting were from his home state.” Region 4 represents 64,000 active and 122,000 retirees from the four states.