Democratic mayoral hopeful Muriel Bowser has been stacking up labor endorsements, but now David Catania has a union endorsement of his own. The District’s chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police will endorse Catania tomorrow, according to Catania’s campaign and union leadership.

FOP chairman Delroy Burton says the union picked Catania in part because of his work on the troubled United Medical Center and his education reforms.

“While I certainly don’t agree with him all the time and we’ve taken opposite positions, I think he’s a man of integrity,” Burton says.

Still, the union didn’t have much of a choice. Burton says Bowser didn’t seek the union’s general election endorsement after winning the primary. (Bowser’s campaign hasn’t responded yet to LL on whether she skipped the general election endorsement.)

Catania campaign manager Ben Young says the endorsement amounts to a “a vote of confidence” in Catania’s candidacy.

It’s not clear, though, how much the FOP endorsement will help the independent Catania. Only around 840 of the union’s 3,600 members live in the District, according to Burton, and the union isn’t planning to match the media blitz it arranged when it endorsed primary hopeful Tommy Wells—-who lost anyway.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery