Bob Brooks will finally enter the PA-7 race for Congress on Friday, and supposedly this time it *will* happen. One would think that would have nothing to do with the timeline of the biggest union in America endorsing a candidate for Congress in PA-7. According to one labor member in the Lehigh Valley though, that may not be the case.

The four existing candidates recently, and somewhat suddenly, were asked to do an interview with local SEIU leaders. Now, it’s important to understand that the SEIU local and state structure is fairly complex, but usually there’s no separation on endorsements. The reason the candidates were hastily asked to do an endorsement meeting, at least according to one person, was that the endorsement needed to be ready for Bob Brooks entry into the race. The Brooks campaign will seek to portray early momentum and inevitability. This is supposed to be a part of that.

Given the overlap of a public sector union doing their endorsement and a public sector union president entering, one could be suspicious. This doesn’t seem like something SEIU would do though. It doesn’t seem like it fits their politics, or recent past endorsement processes. Color me skeptical.

The counter point is pretty clear though- if they are standing with Brooks at a launch on Friday, the process was basically a sham. In fact, if they announce an endorsement in the next couple of weeks, or even before the end of this fundraising quarter, it appears that it was a coordinated hit from the start. I don’t really have a problem with unions knowing who they want on day one and foregoing a formal process to get there, but I do think it’s shitty to make the other candidates march in for a process that was never real.

Again, I’m skeptical this is what’s up. I guess we’re doing full disclosure here though.