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Funiciello picks up big labor endorsement

The Green Party candidate to represent the North Country in U.S. congress, Matt Funiciello, scored a big victory Monday, securing the endorsement of SEIU Local 200, an Upstate New York service employees union that serves more than 15,000 public and private sector workers in the region.

Funiciello, a Glens Falls-based bread company owner, called the endorsement a turning point in the race for the 21st Congressional District.” The Green is going up against incumbent Republican Elise Stefanik and Democratic challenger Mike Derrick, a retired Army colonel from Peru.

Funiciello, a favorite within the national Green Party who spoke at the party’s nominating convention in Houston in July, is regarded as one of the most viable third party candidates in American politics after garnering 11 percent of the vote in this same race in 2014.

“My endorsement by SEIU Local 200 shows that workers in NY-21 understand that it is my candidacy, and the Green Party, who truly represent the working class,” Funiciello said in a press release Monday. “They have soundly rejected the Democratic Party and Mike Derrick – who like to talk about labor while taking money from Wall Street and passing anti-worker trade legislation.”

Funiciello noted that the SEIU has a history at the forefront of labor struggles since its inception in 1932. In the release, he said Martin Luther King Jr. once called the SEIU the “the authentic conscience of the labor movement.”

Funiciello added that the Green Party platform he supports, which includes full employment through a Green New Deal of public jobs at living wages, single-payer universal healthcare, universal free higher education, abolishing student debt and defeating trade deals like the TPP, shows that Greens are the “true” labor party.

“A robust America needs a robust, politically militant working class,” he said. “I am here to pledge that as a candidate, a Green, and a member of Congress I will be fully committed to building that America.

“I know what it’s like to be a worker because I am one,” he continued. “I put in long hours alongside my workers every day and, like them, I struggle without affordable health care and a fair number of my employees make more than I do. We need a Congress of workers and not millionaires so all voices can be heard.”

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