CARBONDALE, Pa. - Al Gore won, at long last, endorsement of the 1.4 million-member Teamsters union yesterday after nearly a year of courtship and delay.
The union has been especially impressed with Gore's ''populist message'' since the Democratic convention, spokesman Bret Caldwell said. The Republicans said that the endorsement was no surprise and that its impact was diminished by its lateness.
Gore also got a boost from Scranton's Republican mayor, Jim Connors, who met the vice president outside a restaurant and announced he was joining the Democratic Party and endorsing Gore. The mayor also gave Gore a key to the city.
Gore later said he had felt a lift in the past week. ''I'm having fun. ... There's been a real surge of energy.''
The Democratic vice president heard the news on the Teamsters just as he wrapped up a campaign stop promoting his goal of creating 10 million high-tech jobs through business tax incentives. He spoke at Gentex Corp., manufacturer of protective suits for firefighting and chemical warfare.
The Teamsters' 24-member executive board voted unanimously to give Gore the endorsement and the millions of dollars in voter mobilization that come with it.
Gore said: ''I have heard from lots and lots of rank-and-file members that they want the agenda I've been talking about.''
Teamsters president James Hoffa Jr. said he called Gore with word of the endorsement.
''I said `I have some good news for you' and he says, `Well, it's good to hear good news ... we need the Teamsters on our side,''' he told a rally for Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in Lake Success, N.Y., on Long Island.
The board's vote followed an internal poll of Teamsters leadership nationwide that found 90 percent supported Gore, a union official said. The remaining 10 percent split among Republican George W. Bush, Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, and the Green Party's Ralph Nader.
The endorsement is to be formally announced next week, with Gore expected to schedule a campaign stop to thank the union.
Yesterday, Gore, in blue jeans, told Gentex workers that his was a fight for the middle class. He drilled into Bush's agenda, reinforcing the full-page ad that his campaign placed in yesterday's New York Times to ask ''Does it matter if the numbers all add up?''
Gore argued that tax cuts pushed by Bush would eat up the entire budget surplus and force the Republican to pay for other campaign promises through deficit spending. Moreover, Gore said, Bush's proposal to privatize a portion of Social Security, a plan he has yet to detail, would leave a ''trillion-dollar hole'' in the retirement program's trust fund.
Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett, at the Texas governor's Austin campaign headquarters, faulted the detailed budget that Gore released on Wednesday for not putting price tags on some 50 of his own campaign promises.
''If we can't trust Al Gore to give all the details of his own budget, how can we expect him to tell the truth about Governor Bush's budget?'' Bartlett said.
Listening at Gore's loading-dock rally, worker Barry Craven said the dickering over numbers ''went in one ear and out the other.''
From Pennsylvania, Gore continued on to New Orleans for an evening rally in the French Quarter with his wife, Tipper.
It has been 11 months since the Teamsters, angry over Gore's free-trade views and joined by the United Auto Workers, broke ranks with the AFL-CIO and refused Gore an early endorsement. Union leaders were further upset when Gore, in mid-June, installed as campaign chairman former commerce secretary William Daley, the administration's point man in the trade fight against labor.
Hoffa had long threatened the possibility of endorsing Bush or just sitting out the election.
Bartlett said the importance of the endorsement was diminished by the long delay.
''This will not deter us one bit in pushing our case to rank-and-file working families,'' said Bartlett.
The auto workers formally backed Gore last month.
The endorsement decided, the Teamsters now add their efforts to the more than $40 million that the AFL-CIO and individual unions are pouring into voter education and get-out-the-vote activities designed to aid Gore. In all, the Teamsters political action teams are to spend $9 million on Gore's and other races.
As part of the union drive, Bartlett said the Bush camp expected labor leaders to act as ''attack surrogates for the Al Gore campaign to distort Governor Bush's record.''
''We will vigorously set the record straight,'' Bartlett said.
