Illinois' Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) announced today that they will be teaming up to campaign for incumbent Governor Quinn, in the upcoming Democratic primary. Quinn recently supported a bill intended to bring several thousand jobs back to Illinois, but his challenger Dan Hynes also has his support, mostly from carpenters and laborers unions. Together the SEIU and IBT have about 300,000 members in the state, concentrated highly in Cook County. The unions plan, among other strategies, to run join phone banks and coordinate campaign spending. The AFSCME, which represents most state employees and currently faces a decision between foregoing a pay cut or sacrificing over 2,000 jobs, remains officially undecided at this point.
See "Unions teaming up for Gov. Quinn's campaign", Abdon M. Pallasch, United Press International, September 13, 2009