Scott Martelle of the Los Angeles Times reports on one of the paper's blogs:

This should pay for a lot of phone banks and door-hangers. The AFL-CIO announced Friday that it would spend a record $53 million in the 2008 election cycle -- all of it for grassroots mobilization. And it plans to mobilize an army of 200,000 union volunteers for precinct-walking and other get out the vote efforts. Overall, it expects to spend $200 million on the campaign.

The labor group said it intends to target Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin -- core regions of the country's traditional manufacturing base.