Gephardt nabs 12th union endorsement

WASHINGTON -- Dick Gephardt picked up his 12th union endorsement Wednesday in his campaign to win the full support of the AFL-CIO in the Democratic presidential contest.

The Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers union, with 300,000 members, announced the endorsement in a statement.

The Missouri congressman is a longtime ally of organized labor and would seem to be the automatic choice for an endorsement by the AFL-CIO, which has 65 affiliate unions with 13 million members. He is the only one of the nine Democratic hopefuls to win endorsements from international unions.

But Gephardt, who ran unsuccessfully in 1988, must convince some powerful leaders of large service and public sector unions that he is not yesterday's candidate.

He's had mixed results. Gephardt failed to meet his national fund-raising goals, and his lead as measured by polls in Iowa, where the first votes will be cast for president in 2004, has been erased by insurgent candidate Howard Dean.

Union support brings a campaign thousands of foot soldiers working on a candidate's behalf, and money to help back those efforts.

To get the AFL-CIO endorsement, a candidate must win support from two-thirds of the federation's 13 million members, or 8.7 million.

So far, Gephardt's 12 union endorsements have a collective membership of about 3.5 million.