Las Vegas Sun

By David Schwartz · January 14, 2008 · 1:38 PM

Come out swinging hard, and there's always the possibility you leave yourself open to a counter punch.

The Nevada State Education Association has put itself out there by being one of the plaintiffs on the lawsuit challenging the at-large precincts during the caucus.

Some of its supporters are obviously not pleased - "deeply dismayed," apparently.

Below is the text of a letter sent from Nevada teachers to the president of the Nevada State Education Association taking issue with the lawsuit that their union is currently pursuing. The letter was released by Sen. Barack Obama's campaign.

January 14, 2008

Ms. Lynn Warne

President

Nevada State Education Association

3511 East Harmon Avenue

Las Vegas, NV 89121

Dear President Warne:

As teachers in Nevada, and members of the Nevada State Education Association, we are deeply dismayed that our union is trying to stop our students’ parents from caucusing on Saturday. We urge them in the strongest terms to drop this lawsuit immediately.

Many of our students are Hispanic Americans and come from low-income families. Their parents are construction workers, McDonald’s employees, and other shift workers on the strip, who work around the clock, and won’t have time to travel to their caucus locations on Saturday. That’s why the state Democratic committee set up nine at-large precinct locations on the strip — to provide nearby caucus locations for Nevadans who otherwise wouldn’t be able to caucus.

These at-large locations were approved back in March of 2007, and no one raised any concerns about them for nearly a year. But now, our union is filing a lawsuit making the baseless charge that these at-large caucus locations are discriminatory, when the fact is they were set up to make sure as many Nevadans could caucus as possible.

This lawsuit is all about politics. It’s widely known that many of our union’s top officials support Senator Clinton and now that the Culinary Workers Union has endorsed Senator Obama, they’re using our union to stop

Nevadans from caucusing for Senator Obama.

We never thought our union and Senator Clinton would put politics ahead of what’s right for our students, but that’s exactly what they’re doing. As teachers, and proud Democrats, we hope they will drop this undemocratic lawsuit and help all Nevadans caucus, no matter which candidate they support.

Sincerely,

(The letter was signed by 15 teachers.)