During Republican U.S. Representative Dave Reichert’s first term in
office, David Rolf, president of SEIU 775, one of Washington State’s
most powerful unions, tried to meet with the congressman at his D.C.
office. Rolf still has a sour taste in his mouth about the botched
rendezvous: “I met with a 23-year-old staffer out on a couch in the
reception room,” he says.
Indeed, despite regular invites to
SEIU events and calls to
participate in
its endorsement process (SEIU does endorse
Republicans, including conservative Eastside Republican Luke Esser for
state senate in 2006), Reichert has shown zero interest in meeting with
the union. Until now, that is.
On November 28, Reichert met with Rolf at the congressman’s Mercer
Island office for an hour. “I met with Congressman Reichert for the
first time since he took office,” Rolf, a wiry, cocky, political
brawler says. “He suggested the meeting.”
“We’d like to have a relationship with SEIU,” Reichert’s chief of
staff Mike Shields explains.
Could it be that Bush ally Reichert is antsy about 2008? Antiwar
challenger Democrat Darcy Burner, who came within 7,000 votes of
beating Reichert in 2006, currently has more cash on hand: $370,228 to
the incumbent’s $339,518. More impressive, 90 percent of Burner’s cash
has come from individual donors (as opposed to political action
committees) while only 56 percent of Reichert’s money is from
individuals.
Reichert’s views aren’t in sync with the increasingly blue Seattle
suburbs he represents. Reichert has been a consistent vote for
President Bush on the war (voting three times this year against
stipulations on war funding). He’s also been a solid social
conservative: He voted for a constitutional amendment banning gay
marriage; he voted against funding for Planned Parenthood; and he voted
for stricter abortion parental-notification laws.
Lately, however, Reichert seems to be moving left. He shocked a
Seattle audience by broadcasting an anticorporate media message to last
month’s FCC hearing at Town Hall (“Relaxing restrictions on media
ownership is clearly not in the public interest… a diverse media
market reduces the risk that news will be censored or slanted by a few
controlling interests”). He also voted for a gay-rights bill last
month, and voted to override Bush’s veto of a low-income children’s
health-care bill (SCHIP).
SEIU takes some credit for moving Reichert on SCHIP. SEIU flooded
his district with robo calls after Reichert initially voted against the
children’s health-care bill in August. In late September, after the
SEIU phone blitz, Reichert voted for the bill. Then he called for a
meeting with the politically active union. (SEIU was a powerful force
for Burner in 2006.) Looks like Reichert is running scared.
Reichert’s office disputes this version of
events—convincingly. The yea vote he cast in September was for an
amended version that Reichert pushed and got in the Senate
reconciliation version. Reichert then met with SEIU, Shields says, to
set the SCHIP record straight with the union.
Why Reichert felt it was important to set the record straight with a
union he’d refused to acknowledge in the past,
however, is another
question. 
