ILWU Secretary-Treasurer William Adams gives ILWU's contribution to Democratic Congressional candidate Jerry McNerney. Photo by Tom Price.
As part of labor’s campaign to deprive Bush of his Republican majority in Congress for his last two years in office, California unions, including the ILWU, are lining up to endorse Democrat Jerry McNerney for Congress. McNerney is challenging incumbent Richard Pombo, one of the most right-wing and corrupt Republicans in the House of Representatives, for California’s 11th Congressional District. That district encompasses ILWU turf in Stockton, Livermore, Brentwood and Gilroy, as well as parts of San Jose and Tracy.
Even 78-year old Pete McCloskey, the moderate Republican who represented District 12 in the San Francisco Peninsula for eight terms, has come out of retirement to challenge Pombo in the Republican primary. McCloskey is appalled that Pombo is California’s largest recipient of contributions from indicted influence-peddling lobbyist Jack Abramoff. One of Abramoff’s clients paid the lobbyist millions to ward off labor reform legislation aimed at the Marianas Islands, a U.S. colony, where the client owns garment sweatshops. The bill died in the House Committee on Resources, which oversees the Marianas and which Pombo chairs. Pombo and his connections to Abramoff are the target of further investigations.
A vocal supporter of Bush’s Iraqi war policies, Pombo also voted against a bill to extend medical coverage to National Guard and reservists returning from Iraq. Pombo’s latest bill would allow use of new pesticides for five years before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency reviews them for possible negative affects on endangered species, a change long lobbied for by the pesticide industry.
Democrat McNerney, on the other hand, has positions much more closely aligned with the interests of working people.
“The Republicans are taking this country in the wrong direction,” McNerney told The Dispatcher. “They’re fighting against working people, they’re trying to take us back to the period when workers had no rights. The war is a tragic distraction from where we need to be spending our resources, which would be investing in our infrastructure, educating our young people and providing health care for all Americans.”
--Tom Price
