July 27, 2005

Nope, nothing political about it, notwithstanding all those musical chairs as activists keep hopping around between unions, anti-Wal-Mart groups, and Democratic campaign outfits:

Soon after Joe Hansen took the UFCW helm a year ago, the union decided to freeze its Wal-Mart organizing activities altogether and take what, in many ways, is the mirror-image approach. Instead of disparate, store-specific drives, it would concentrate its efforts in Washington, using Internet-age campaign tactics and drawing staff from the city's abundance of savvy politicos. In April, the union announced Wake Up Wal-Mart, a Washington-based campaign led by Blank, Howard Dean's former political director. (Chris Kofinis, the former deputy policy director for Wesley Clark's primary campaign, is its communications adviser.) Meanwhile, at the same time Wake Up Wal-Mart appeared, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) helped to launch another effort, Wal-Mart Watch. Like Wake Up Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart Watch has attracted a coterie of bold-faced campaign names, including John Kerry's former campaign manager Jim Jordan (officially a partner at the lobby shop Westhill Partners), former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Executive Director Andrew Grossman, and the former deputy director of research at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Tracy Sefl. (The AFL-CIO, which is the umbrella organization for both UFCW and SEIU, has its own Wal-Mart operation, run, until recently, by Ellen Moran, a DNC veteran.)

More on Wal-Mart and public policy here.