Ron Arnold: Meet the three most powerful Big Labor bosses you never heard of

Most of Big Labor’s political campaign money comes from payroll deductions and checkoff donations from the 56 affiliates of the AFL-CIO and breakaway rivals such as the Service Employees International Union, plus independents like the Carpenters Union and the giant 3.2 million-member National Education Association.

But who decides where Big Labor’s political money goes in election campaigns and in off-year pushes like bussing thousands of pro-union protesters to Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other places where Republican officials are challenging public employee unions?

It’s time to meet the three most important union bosses you’ve probably never heard of, the political directors for the AFL-CIO, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the Service Employees International Union.

Union members, locals, councils, executive boards, or the intricate network of state union allies all influence decisions about where to spend Big Labor’s campaign money, but the power pivots are these three political directors, whose job description read like a war room manual:

Karen Ackerman

The AFL-CIO’s political director of 15 years is the first woman to fill the position, coordinating the federation’s huge electoral and legislative campaign operations from strategy sessions to lobbying blitz or get-out-the-vote drive.

Her political career began in 1970 with the second Venceremos Brigade, a prohibited annual trip to Cuba organized by radical New Leftists “to show solidarity with the Cuban Revolution,” cutting sugar cane with the locals for a week. Back home, Ackerman worked her way up as a union organizer, landing her first political director job in 1986 with the New York State Public Employees Federation.

In 1996, AFL-CIO political director Steve Rosenthal hired her and within a year she was deputy political director, running the federation’s political action committee. When Rosenthal left in 2003 to run America Coming Together, President John Sweeney hired her as political director.

She assembled the federation’s largest grass-roots campaign for the 2004 “Dump Bush” brawl with Rosenthal’s help, and lost. For the 2006 midterms, she became a director of the state campaign support group, Progressive Majority. Her most triumphant moment was Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential victory.

But the 2010 midterms proved her downfall. The lack of enthusiasm among union workers couldn’t be overcome. Defeated Democrats saw unions as scapegoats, leading federation President Richard Trumka to say, “We did our job. Unfortunately, the rest of society was over-large in the other way.”

Ackerman announced two weeks ago that she will step down, but talk of a successor has been drowned in the turmoil against Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his legislation to repeal most state collective bargaining rights. Her departure is not seen as coincidental.

Larry Scanlon

He has been political director of the 1.6 million member AFSCME, an AFL-CIO affiliate, since 1996, and came with 20 years ex perience in political jobs with an AFSCME New York affiliate.

Scanlon skillfully built on AFSCME’s history of taking the lead in political activism, but has been more of a backroom political director than Ackerman, and for a structural reason: AFSCME’s flamboyant president, Gerald McEntee, also chairs AFL-CIO’s political committee, influencing the whole federation and overshadowing Scanlon.

In the 2010 campaign, McEntee saw holes in the Democratic message, took out loans and dipped into a $16 million emergency fund to buy broadcast spots in Ohio and Florida – something a political director normally cannot do.

But Scanlon got credit as the campaign’s triage medic: Don’t give to the easy survivors, don’t give to the hopeless cases, but save battleground candidates. AFSCME spent at least $91 million, and Scanlon hit the headlines with, “We’re top dog.”

Jon Youngdahl

Since February 2007, he has been the national political director for the Service Employees International Union with responsibility for coordinating its electoral and legislative field campaign operations.

Like all good political directors, Youngdahl came from a strong state level background, a veteran in Minnesota politics. Ironically, Youngdahl was mentored and trained by Heather Booth, protege of Saul Alinsky and founder of Chicago’s radical Midwest Academy. In 1989, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee hired Booth’s husband, Paul, as his personal assistant. Big Labor has many internal far-left links.

Youngdahl is a relative short-timer, yet to show his real strength, but clearly highly competent: during 2008-2010, he oversaw SEIU’s Change that Works campaign to pass national health care reform, and directed all independent expenditure and state ballot initiative campaigns.

But big changes are sweeping Big Labor. With the departure of iconic tough-guy leader Andy Stern in January, SEIU is reconfiguring at the top without clear direction, and Youngdahl may never get to show his mettle.

But the Citizens United Supreme Court decision and a new tool may save their day: The Atlas Project, founded by Steve Rosenthal and friends, brings together supercomputerized databases tailored to the unique nature of the states and districts where the toughest battles are fought, instructions on writing a winning campaign plan, past election results, absentee voting laws, public media spending, filing deadlines, how to reach opinion leaders – a treasure trove political directors need.

If the Tea Party has something equivalent, we haven’t heard about it.

Examiner Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.