CA labor leader Durazo: "There is no person who could get more people to get the vote out."

Obama gets major labor endorsement

By Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 16, 2008
The head of the politically powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor said Tuesday that she is endorsing Barack Obama for president.

The endorsement by Maria Elena Durazo is a coup for Obama that could help the Illinois senator in his uphill struggle against Hillary Rodham Clinton to win substantial support among Latino voters in Southern California. Obama has won the backing of other Los Angeles-area Latino leaders, but this is probably his biggest such endorsement yet, given the broad reach of the county labor federation.

...Durazo said her endorsement, to be formally announced today, was a personal one. She is taking a leave of absence from her job to campaign for Obama through Feb. 5, when more than 20 states, including California, will conduct primaries or caucuses.

...Jaime A. Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles, said California's Latino voters back Clinton by a wide margin, but Durazo's endorsement "might well turn" the opinions of some undecided voters.

"She's a powerful player -- there's no question about that. It will move some people, it will cause some other people to think and rethink," he said. Still, the Durazo endorsement by itself, Regalado said, is "not enough to sway" a large number of Latino voters.

But Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, emphasized Durazo's key role in local politics. He said Durazo "symbolizes the new power in Los Angeles and in California -- the marriage of Latinos and labor."

"And when you have those numbers, that organization and those volunteers, it makes an impact," Guerra said. "There is no person in all of California who could get more people out to the street to go do something, either to march or get the vote out."

Full article at http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-labor16jan16,0,656548.story?coll=la-home-center

But I thought Brown people don't vote for Black people. :shrug:

But seriously, I think that White folks sometimes do an awful lot of directing who votes for who.