In AFSCME ad, a message between the lines?

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.

But Steve Madarasz, spokesman for the state's 260,000-member Civil Service Employees Association -- part of AFSCME -- on Thursday called it "a bit of a stretch" to read the ads as a whack at any official. While the ads "do not come in a political vacuum," Madarasz argued that if the union were going after a politician it disagreed with, it would do so directly.

Christopher Policano, spokesman for AFSCME in Washington, said Friday: "At a time when too many elected officials from both parties are talking about balancing budgets on the backs of working families, politicians need to be reminded of the value of public employees and their contributions to the communities where they live and work. Hopefully, this campaign will help accomplish that in New York."

Cuomo recently reached five-year contract with CSEA, and no Wisconsin-like drive to break collective bargaining happened here.

One more thing: Although CSEA president Danny Donohue and AFSCME secretary-treasurer Lee Saunders are potential rivals to succeed AFSCME president Gerald McEntee, they sound consistent on this one.