Heck wins labor endorsement, launches TV ad in 3rd

Heck’s campaign said today it welcomes the support, which came during the council’s convention Wednesday in Tacoma. The endorsement comes as Heck launches his first television ad ahead of Tuesday’s primary election.

In the 30-second ad, Heck talks of needing to get credit flowing and giving tax incentives for businesses to add jobs. The six-way race for retiring Democratic Rep. Brian Baird’s seat is drawing attention of national party groups on both sides and could help determine control of the U.S. House.

One top Republican in the race, state Rep. Jaime Herrera of Camas, began her ad campaign a few weeks ago with a piece called “Trust” that questioned Democrats’ spending.

One other high-profile GOP hopeful in the race is David Castillo, a financial adviser from Olympia. Heck’s campaign spokesman Grant Lahmann said the jobs ad is running tonight on CNN and on stations throughout the district, which ranges from Olympia to Vancouver and from the Cascade foothills to the ocean.

Lahmann said Heck is not taking the race for granted but feels there is a good chance he’ll emerge as one of the top two vote getters. Only the top two candidates in the primary advance to the Nov. 2 ballot under the state’s “top-two” runoff format, and it’s possible for finalists in some races to be from the same party (but it strikes me that Heck’s team, which has raised almost three times as much money as what the runner-up campaign has collected, is trying awfully hard to sound modest).

Heck is a former legislator from Clark County who later co-founded the TVW public-affairs network. He has made jobs his primary focus and paints himself as an Olympia entrepreneur who has created jobs.

The labor council initially threw its support for Pridemore, a Vancouver Democrat whose left-of-center voting record ranked much higher on labor issues than the record Heck compiled in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the state House. But Pridemore dropped out of the race a few months ago.

Lahmann said the campaign understood labor’s wish to support a candidate who had Pridemore’s strong record and recent working relationship. He said the endorsement goes with other labor backing Heck has been amassing.

Tim Welch, spokesman for the Washington Federation of State Employees in Olympia, said labor preferred Pridemore because it had a more recent working record. But labor has worked with Heck over the years and he believes labor activists to get enthused about him after Tuesday’s primary.

Welch said that Heck, like former president Bill Clinton, didn’t have an ideal labor record, but he offers something else: “We think he has the ability to get elected.”

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