Video: Public-worker messages cite 'Irene' response

A new televised ad campaign from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has drawn notice among New York political insiders for two key reasons. First, the ads seem so mom-and-apple pie as to convey a remarkably nonconfrontational message. Against an audio backdrop of poignant piano and strings, with brief cuts of sirens and hard rain falling, eight public employees who performed emergency tasks during Tropical Storm Irene do the talking over a 30-second span. Second, the ads, reported to have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, were made for broadcast in New York State -- not, say, Wisconsin or Ohio , where battles over the organizing rights of public employees have been joined, but in a blue state where Democrats dominate. That second fact stirs political speculation. As much as the campaign is meant to say, as AFSME put it in a news release, that "public employees . . . serve communities across the state every day, even in life-threatening conditions," at least one news blogger, for example, interpreted the ads as a "warning shot" targeting Democratic Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo 's drive for union concessions and pension changes.