Longtime Dem Consultant Torpedoed by Union Thugs

by: warner todd huston | published: 02 19, 2010

In Democrat political consulting circles Pat Caddell is a big name. One-time adviser to President Jimmy Carter and longtime political strategist for the left, Caddell isn’t someone you throw off a campaign easily. But the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) doesn’t care about past success. It only cares about its power.

After being thrown off the campaign of Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff’s campaign for Senate, Caddell spoke to the folks at The Daily Caller and said he’d been axed by the “thugs” at the SEIU.

“What I said about Andy Stern and the SEIU? Sure, they’re thugs,” said Caddell, a former adviser to President Jimmy Carter, who until Monday* had an informal advising role with the primary challenger to incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet.

“The unions have been considering endorsing Romanoff, and basically they told him that if I was involved with the campaign, ‘sayonara,’ which I think is the definition of thuggery isn’t it?” said Caddell, who has worked for a who’s who of Democratic politicians over the last few decades, including Ted Kennedy, George McGovern, Mario Cuomo and Gary Hart.

I couldn’t agree more. Unions will brook no opposition and even the smallest disagreement marks you for destruction with a union… even if you are on the same political side as they!

He pointed out, as have we -- repeatedly -- that public employees unions are destroying the country,

“I think the public unions are going to take the country and the Democratic party down the tubes. They’re in the business of taking care of — of asking taxpayers, asking ordinary people, to pay for people who make twice as much as they make, with benefit packages they will never see, and they’re told, you may not cut those.”

We agree.

Caddell also ripped the Obama administration for its fealty to the public employees unions.

“What they have created is a world in which there is no dissent. Don’t look at me. Look at [Sen.] Evan Bayh. People, with some justification, may think that I’m crazy. But he is the center of the establishment if there was ever was someone,” Caddell said. “When there’s no room in the Democratic party for him and there’s no room in the Democratic party for me, and the unions do get to make those kinds of calls in defense of the indefensible, because, ‘We own you,’ well, the Democratic party will be finished.”

Caddell isn’t right about much politically, but he dead on with this one. Public employees unions are antithetical to good government and dangerous to our Republic.

(Cross posted at TheUnionLabelBlog.com)

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