The Hillary Clinton campaign pulled the plug on its plan to use the Tacoma Convention Center for tomorrow’s Tacoma visit, and was scrambling this morning to find a new location.

That’s the word from Ron Geier, owner of Tacoma-based Northwest Staging and Sound. According to Geier, the dust-up centers around union issues.

Clinton’s campaign hired Geier’s company to do the lighting, sound, piping and drapes for Clinton’s visit. It was a logical choice for a couple of reasons: His company has lots of experience doing political jobs. It’s worked on events for Barack Obama, and John Edwards, and Gov. Chris Gregoire’s town hall meetings.

Perhaps just as important, his shop is part of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. The union has endorsed Clinton.

“They’re certainly not going to use non-union stage employees,” Geier said.

But that’s what the staff at the convention center wanted them to do, Geier said.

Convention center officials told Clinton’s campaign workers that the convention center had in-house audio visual people who could do the work that Geier’s company was planning to do, and the the in-house people were unionized.

When Geier heard this, he told the Clinton campaign that the convention center actually contracts with a Seattle company, The AV Factory, and that the company is non-union. The Clinton people went back to the convention center, and that’s when the talks went south.

Geier said he met with convention center officials and told them that Clinton’s campaign wanted his company to work the event. A convention center official replied, “That’s not going to happen,” Geier said.

So the Clinton campaign started looking — quickly — to find a new venue.

Word is they may end up at the Longshoreman’s Hall at the University of Washington Tacoma.

I’ve got calls in to the convention center general manager and a Clinton campaign worker to hear what they have to say.

UPDATE:

David Bobo, general manager of the convention center, said his staff worked late into the night Wednesday trying to put together the Friday morning event before learning that Clinton's campaign wanted everyone working on the event to be union.

Many of the convention center workers are unionized, Bobo said, but he told the Clinton campaign that some contractors are not, including the AV Factory employees.

Given more time, it would have been possible to let Geier's company or another company come into the building and do the work. But the exhibition hall is an "acoustical nightmare" and the AV Factory has the most experience with that particular space, Bobo said.

"We had to make sure it was right for a visit from a presidential candidate," he said.

Bobo said Geier's company does great work, and he's got no problem with them. But given the time constraints and all the variables, he needed the AV Factory to do the sound on this one.

Or not, as it turned out.