BIG LABOR UNTOUCHED BY CAMPAIGN REFORM

A flash from The Associated Press reveals that Big Labor and the Democratic Party coordinated their efforts to an extraordinary degree in the infamous 1996 campaign.

"Documents that the Democratic Party and unions have sued to keep secret reveal a campaign strategy in which labor and party officials served side-by-side on committees that directed the Democrats' election activities in each state," read an AP dispatch.

It's clear the Big Labor has the veto power inside the Democratic Party. "When the DNC and its national partners (the AFL-CIO and the National Education Association) agree on the contents of a plan, each national partner will give their funding commitment to the state," an internal DNC memo titled "Rules of Engagement" said.

The AFL-CIO donated $35 million to the Democrats in 1996. AFL-CIO general counsel John Hiatt conceded the unions had veto power over Democratic activities it helped finance.

"For aspects of campaigns we subsidize, I think we would want veto power," Hiatt said.

The $35 million figure doesn't count the huge in-kind donations unions make to the party and its candidates, through commitments of manpower, both paid and volunteer.

Although the report is hardly earthshaking, it serves to show the limitations of legislation called campaign-finance reform.

None, or next to none, of the impressive activities of the unions would be touched by the McCain-Feingold measure, or by any of the other bills that have ever had a chance of passing.

So much for real reform.