AFL-CIO protesters to follow McCain around

WASHINGTON — The AFL-CIO said Wednesday that it would have union protesters follow GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain around the country to demand explanations of his positions on economic and labor issues.

The effort is part of a wide-ranging campaign aimed at linking the Arizona senator with what union officials call the Bush administration’s failed economic policies.

The nation’s largest labor federation also plans to devote part of its record-setting $53.4-million grass-roots mobilization campaign fund to criticizing McCain through workplace leafletting, volunteer door-knocking, telephone calls, e-mail, direct mailings and an anti-McCain website, www.mccainrevealed.org.

“Everywhere John McCain goes in the coming months, union activists will be there to confront him on his economic positions and plans and demand that he speak to working families’ concerns,” said Karen Ackerman, the AFL-CIO’s political director.

At the same time, the website “will expose Sen. McCain’s record” and “complete his profile to include his unwavering support of George Bush’s failed economic agenda, and call on him to adopt instead working-family policies that offer a clean break from that agenda,” Ackerman said.

The Republican National Committee immediately called on Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to denounce the AFL-CIO campaign, calling it “partisan, old-style politics” and saying the Democrats in the past had criticized “special-interest spending.”

The AFL-CIO has not endorsed either Clinton or Obama in the Democratic presidential primary, although it has allowed its 56 member unions to make individual endorsements. Clinton so far has been endorsed by more AFL-CIO unions than Obama.