Nurses union endorses Bernie Sanders

Hillary Clinton lost her first national labor endorsement Monday when the 185,000-member National Nurses United endorsed Bernie Sanders.

The NNU endorsed Sanders at a “Brunch with Bernie” event at union headquarters in Oakland, California. The nurses group is the second AFL-CIO member union to issue an endorsement; the first, the 1.6-million member American Federation of Teachers, endorsed Clinton in June.


Asked about the endorsement during a campaign stop in New Hampshire, Clinton said: “I was proud to be endorsed by the American Federation of Teachers, I am proud to work with nurses for many, many years on health care and better treatment for nurses. I’m a strong advocate for nurses and I look forward to working with them when I’m president.”

The Sanders endorsement isn’t a surprise: The NNU has long been a militant outlier among labor unions. It opposed the Affordable Care Act because it wasn’t single-payer, and in 2000 its predecessor union, the California Nurses Association, endorsed Ralph Nader over Al Gore for president. At the AFL-CIO’s executive council meeting last month, NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro was among Sanders’ most vigorous supporters.

“We do unconventional things,” DeMoro said.

The labor federation isn’t expected to endorse any 2016 contender soon, partly out of habitual caution — it seldom endorses any Democrat who isn’t already the de facto nominee — and partly, in this instance, because it wants to maximize its leverage over the front-running Clinton. The NNU’s Sanders endorsement, and any union endorsements of the independent Vermont senator that may follow, will increase pressure on Clinton to conform to the AFL-CIO’s “ Raising Wages” agenda.

On occasion, the AFL-CIO’s wait-and-see posture has proved difficult to maintain. State divisions of the AFL-CIO in South Carolina and Vermont broke protocol with endorsements for Sanders, prompting AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka to remind them that endorsements remain the exclusive province of the federation’s Washington office.

The Clinton campaign has responded by courting assiduously the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, Federal and Municipal Employees, two powerful unions with significant presence in Washington. Both unions have held multiple public appearances with Clinton, signaling their likely endorsement of the former secretary of state.

Still, Sanders remains a favorite for many union members. “We travel to the beat of the same drummer,” DeMoro said. “The bedrock issue of his appeal is we’re not about money in politics, we’re about a social movement to change this country.”

The union made national headlines in October during the nation’s Ebola scare when it attacked safety protocols at a Texas hospital where two nurses were infected with the deadly virus. Union leaders alleged that Ebola could travel through the air, even though no such transmission had ever been observed.

But DeMoro maintains her union’s endorsement of Sanders wasn’t inevitable. Clinton’s historic candidacy, she said, could have swayed the rank and file, 98 percent of whom are female.

“We assumed that Hillary Clinton being a woman would have great significance in terms of how the nurses viewed the candidates,” DeMoro said. “What is shocking, and this is literally shocking, was that wasn’t the case.”

The decision to endorse Sanders came from NNU’s leadership, but the union polled its own membership on the issues and candidates. DeMoro wouldn’t reveal how many nurses responded. The number was significant, she said, but she didn’t get as many responses as she’d hoped.

The endorsement comes two weeks after Clinton, Sanders and other Democratic candidates courted labor at the AFL-CIO’s executive council meeting. Clinton and Sanders were well received, though Clinton frustrated some union leaders with her ambivalence on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

DeMoro dismissed any suggestion that Sanders is unelectable. “No one, and I say no one, can say who’s electable in this moment,” she said.