Politics on the Hudson

Mark Penn, chief campaign strategist for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clnton, sent out a memo this evening noting that she is ahead of Sen. Barack Obama in Nevada by 9 points in a Mason Dixon poll and by 5 points in a survey by Zogby Intrnational.

Should Clinton lose in Nevada’s presidential caucuses tomorrow in spite of the polls, Penn indicated the reason would be easy to find. That’s because of the Culinary Union, the state’s largest labor group, will have nine caucus locations inside casinos on the Las Vegas Strip for their members who are working Saturday.

The at-large locations give thousands of casino and restaurant employees who will be working on the busy Martin Luther King holiday weekend an opportunity to participate in the midday caucuses without having to drive home or take a day off.

“Because of a unique weighting system., these sites will count disproportionately in awarding delegates,’’ Penn wrote. “This should give Obama a clear five point advantage starting out.’’

And it would eliminate any lead Clinton has in the polls among voters who might not show up at 11 a.m. for the caucuses.

However, there is no guarantee Obama will win at the at-large caucuses.

Not all union members will be allowed to take a two-hour break. “You just can’t completely abandon work for two hours or so on a busy weekend,” said D. Taylor, the union’s secretary-treasurer.

Moreover, the Culinary Union represents only about half of the workers on the Las Vegas Strip and even among its members there’s no unanimity on the endorsement.

Culinary Union Local 226 has 60,000 members and is an affiliate of UNITE HERE, an international union with 460,000 members that decided on the night of the New Hampshire primary, Jan. 8, to become the first major national union to back Obama.

Since then, the smaller plumbers union also has endorsed Obama.

Most major union endorsements have been split between Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards.

With a relatively low turnout predicted for Saturday’s Democratic presidential caucuses, labor unions could play a much more significant role in the outcome than they did in either Iowa or New Hampshire.

They also have more clout.

An estimated 167,000 Nevada workers, about 14.8 percent of the work force, were members of a union in 2006, significantly more than Iowa’s 11.3 percent and New Hampshire’s 10.1 percent. Iowa and New Hampshire also had high voter turnout that diluted the impact of get-out-the-vote efforts by organized labor.

Edwards, who had courted UNITE HERE for more than a year, has continued to appeal to members to make their own choice and not depend on their leadership.

Clinton has taken a similar approach. She canvassed door-to-door in a neighborhood where many culinary workers live a day after the endorsement.

The Edwards campaign remains cautiously optimistic that he might score an upset victory with support from several other unions, including the carpenters’ union representing construction workers, and the steelworkers union, whose membership includes 1,000 taxi drivers in Las Vegas.

The Nevada local of the Service Employees International Union has endorsed Obama, but it is not getting the large infusion of out-of-state volunteers it might have received if it had endorsed Edwards. That’s because the SEIU chapter in neighboring California is backing Edwards and the bylaws of the union allow California volunteers to travel to Nevada only if both unions have endorsed the same candidate.

Clinton, meanwhile, has national labor union endorsements from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the letter carriers, the sheet metal workers and the American Federation of Teachers. But none of those unions has a blockbuster presence in Nevada that can provide her with a clear edge.

At a news conference after Thursday’s court ruling, the Culinary Union’s Taylor complained about former President Bill Clinton’s public objection to the at-large voting.

“I don’t think there was any bigger threat that was placed on our members than to say that you are going to be disenfranchised by not even having the right to vote,” Taylor said. “Talk about intimidation. And probably if you want to get down to it, the former president of the United States saying there should not be at-large caucuses. That’s pretty intimidating.”

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