RESOLUTION ON PRESIDENTIAL ENDORSEMENTS

WHEREAS, realizing the importance of the presidential endorsement to our members, the AFT executive council, at its February 2007 meeting, adopted an extensive 2008 Presidential Election Endorsement Procedure in an effort to get maximum input from AFT members and affiliates; and

WHEREAS, in March 2007, the AFT set up a “You Decide 2008” section on its Web site and provided an online forum for members to offer opinions and ask questions about announced candidates and their positions on issues; and

WHEREAS, starting in the spring of 2007 and continuing until the primary endorsement was made, all AFT membership publications contained information about all of the announced candidates and presented their views on issues of importance to AFT members and directed members to the “You Decide 2008” Web site; and

WHEREAS, the AFT asked all announced candidates to complete a questionnaire asking for their positions on issues of importance to AFT members, posted the responses on the Web site and invited members’ comments on the responses; and

WHEREAS, the AFT invited all candidates who responded to the questionnaire to meet with the executive council; and

WHEREAS, the AFT, on its “You Decide 2008” Web site, asked members to submit questions that they would like to pose to the candidates; and

WHEREAS, hundreds of AFT members submitted questions for the candidates, the AFT selected eight representative questions from among those submitted and asked AFT members to vote on which three they felt should be asked and invited the authors to the executive council to personally question the candidates; and

WHEREAS, the AFT posted on its Web site videos of the candidates answering the questions and asked for further input from our members to the responses of the candidates and their views on them; and

WHEREAS, the AFT continued to provide information about the candidates and their positions, and throughout the process posted a sampling of more than 50,000 responses from its members; and

WHEREAS, the AFT received resolutions from various locals and state federations expressing their preference for various candidates; and

WHEREAS, the AFT made sure that at the state federation presidents meeting there was extensive discussion of candidates and at the monthly Web meeting; and

WHEREAS, in September 2007, the AFT commissioned Peter Hart Research Associates to do a scientific poll of our members on their preferences in the presidential primary in which 71 percent of AFT members indicated their belief that the AFT should recommend the candidate that the union believes is best on issues affecting members and their families, and also indicating that among our members, Hillary Clinton had a more than 2- to-1 advantage over her nearest Democratic competitor; and

WHEREAS, just 10 weeks before the first primary of the 2008 campaign, in October 2007, on the basis of this lengthy information-gathering and listening process, the executive council endorsed Sen. Clinton for the Democratic nomination, now:

RESOLVED, that in the future, the American Federation of Teachers shall continue this extensive listening process and will explore additional methods offered by the Internet to enhance the involvement of AFT members and its affiliates in the presidential endorsement process.