Democratic candidate for governor Peter Galbraith has gotten the nod from a key committee inside one of the state’s largest labor unions.
The Vermont State Employees Association hasn’t yet endorsed a candidate in the three-way Democratic gubernatorial primary. But on Tuesday evening, the organization’s 23-person legislative committee voted to recommend that the union endorse Galbraith.
The Vermont Press bureau’s Neal Goswami was the first to report the news.
The committee also voted to encourage union members to endorse David Zuckerman for lieutenant governor.
The VSEA will now hold an online straw poll to gauge support among union membership for Galbraith, as well as his rivals Sue Minter and Matt Dunne. The VSEA Board of Trustees will then hold a formal vote to endorse a candidate on June 6, and the union council will decide whether to affirm that choice the next day.
Steve Howard, executive director of the VSEA, says that in a tight, three-way race for the Democratic nomination, “an organized effort by labor can make a difference in who the winner is."
“And our intention is not just to endorse somebody on paper, but to be out there knocking on our members’ doors, educating them on what the choice of their union leadership has been, why that person is the strongest … and encourage them not only to register to vote but to volunteer and support that candidate,” Howard says.
Howard says he anticipates a more robust electioneering effort from the VSEA in 2016 than the union has shown in cycles past.
