Gettelfinger Galled

If Al Gore decides to make another run for the White House, he'd better think twice about the vehicles he drives, warns Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers union.

Plugging his climate-change documentary June 14 on “Larry King Live,” the former vice president said he and his family own three gasoline-electric hybrids: a Lexus RX 400h cross/utility vehicle and a pair of Toyota Prius sedans.

“That would be disappointing to me if he did,” Gettelfinger tells Ward's at the UAW's 34th Constitutional Convention in Las Vegas.

If Gore pursues the presidency in 2008, as supporters are urging, Gettelfinger says the candidate's purchase decisions would pose a problem if he sought the UAW's support.

“Certainly we'd raise that issue with him,” says Gettelfinger, who until recently owned a UAW-built Ford Escape Hybrid.

A UAW spokesman says Gettelfinger's HEV was destroyed in a crash, and the waiting list to obtain another was too long. So he opted for a Ford Five Hundred sedan.

The spokesman says Gettelfinger easily could have used his clout to jump to the front of Ford's queue, “but he doesn't work that way.”

News of Gore's vehicle preferences appears to eat at Gettelfinger. Even if Gore doesn't seek to reclaim the White House for the Democrats, the union chief adds: “We're still going to talk to him.”

The debut last month of Gore's anti-global-warming flick, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was the most successful ever for a documentary.