The endorsement is from the operating engineers. What in the world do they operate? That's unclear in the naming.
Aside from that, the final sentence of the press release quoted at Polinaut is a hoot:
We are proud to endorse her, and our thousands of members will work to ensure she is elected.
No doubt the leadership folks in that union are proud of their endorsement choice. I do not dispute that. However, beyond being a source of GOTV door-to-door and phone bank munchkins, the day the union leaderships can assuredly deliver rank-and-file large vote counts is the day they will be taken far, far more seriously. If they could, Patty Wetterling would the the incumbent Rep. from the Sixth District. Or even the lobbyist from last cycle. But it's Bachmann. Go figure.
The teachers' and bureaucrats' unions do substantially deliver, and seem to accordingly, for better or worse, have a greater local voice in DFL affairs. SEIU has been productive. The building trades, too many of the membership vote according to the half page NRA orange card mailings that repeatedly say little else but "Vote GOP" with the recipients generally too unsophisticated to see themselves being rudely and repeatedly manipulated. Whether or not that's how it should be, it is how it is.
I think the nurses and SEIU represent lower-rank healthcare employees, and they (at least through leadership decision making) favor Clark over Reed, who touts her experience in healthcare management as her main qualifying feature. I see those endorsements as most harmful to her DFL hopes, because of that, but what has Reed done to try to earn such endorsements. So far she's lodged a press release complaint that union procedures were reputedly unfair to her - but Reed has not said why she is in any way more deserving of endorsements Clark attained. It is curious.
She has not even explained why she believes the DFL should pay her great attention despite her having run against the Hatch-Dutcher ticket. If she had a good reason for doing that, now is the best available time to articulate it. Yesterday would have been better and tomorrow may be too late.
My greatest concern is that Maureen Reed may again run IP, although she has given public assurances to the contrary. But after caucus voting, will she find some supposed slight justifying in her mind an IP candidacy? We have to wait and see.