Teacher unions fight to keep clout with Democrats

Reuters reports:

The email did not mince words. It came from an officer at a California teachers union, and he was irate.

President Barack Obama's re-election team had just hired as a spokeswoman a veteran Democratic operative who had spent the last year at a nonprofit, pushing education policies that the union did not like.

The union had endorsed Obama. But Jeffrey Freitas, secretary of the California Federation of Teachers, wanted to make clear this woman's hiring threatened that alliance. If Obama's team thought teachers would help the campaign after this hire, "then they are seriously wrong," he wrote. As long as she was in her post, he wrote, "we may not be able to participate."

The struggle within the Democrat party.