Published: March 15, 2010

As expected, the labor-backed Working Families Party voted over the weekend in favor of a resolution barring the endorsement of members of Congress who vote "no" on health care reform.

The vote was "overwhelming," according to a party source. (The actual tally isn't being released). The resolution was pushed by SEIU/1199, one of the WFP's biggest and most powerful affiliates.

"This week’s showdown on health care could be one of the most important votes a Member of Congress makes in their entire career,” said WFP Executive Director Dan Cantor.

“Even if we supported them before, the WFP simply cannot endorse Members of Congress who would waste this once in a generation chance to improve our broken health care system.”

According to my party source, there's a faction in the WFP that is arguing in favor of running challengers against the "no" voters instead of merely pulling support for them. That would be a fairly extreme move, but if the anger inside the party keeps mounting, it is a distinct possibility.

The WFP has run insurgent candidates against Democratic incumbents before, successfully winning five City Council races that fell into that category last fall.

At least six New York House votes are believed to be in play at the moment. But the members coming under the most pressure are two who voted "no" last time around: Rep. Mike McMahon (NY-13) and Rep. Scott Murphy (NY-20). Both are currently on the fence.

McMahon got a personal visit last week from SEIU 32BJ's Mike Fishman, who made it clear that labor will not at all be happy if the freshman Democrat casts another "no" vote.

Murphy was presented on Sunday with 7,000 signatures gathered by the WFP urging him to support the bill.

The WFP noted that it has provided the margin of victory for Democratic congressional candidates five times since 2002: Tim Bishop (2002), Brian Higgins (2004), Eric Massa (2008), Bill Owens and Murphy (2009).