Flashback to November 2010: As Republican governors win victories across the country, the race in Minnesota comes down to a nail biter. Eventually, Democrat Mark Dayton wins the governorship, beating Republican Tom Emmer by just under 9,000 votes, or 0.42 percent of votes cast.
Working America organizers and canvassers were part of the ground game that put Dayton over the top, and boy, are we glad we did.
Over the last 18 months, the radical anti-worker legislature in Minnesota have passed bill after bill, none of them having to do with the promises of jobs from the 2010 campaign. Gov. Dayton’s veto pen was the only thing keeping many harmful policies at bay: ending Minnesota’s status as a right-to-bargain state, voter suppression, limiting consumers’ rights to class-action suits, a Florida-style “Stand Your Ground” gun bill, and even a bill that would protect asbestos companies from liability.
In all, Gov. Dayton vetoed 10 bills passed by the Republican-controlled Minnesota legislature that are modeled after ALEC legislation. Check out the list.
To get around the veto, GOP legislators voted to put the voter suppression bill to a referendum in November as a Constitutional Amendment. However, as the legislative session ended last week, they decided not to similarly put a harmful bargaining rights bill on the November ballot.
Why? There are lots of reasons, but a significant number of GOP legislators did not want to want the situation over the border in Wisconsin to come to them; enormous protests, national labor support coming into the state, and a complete political standstill.
GOP state Rep. Tony Cornish cited the prospect of “millions of dollars coming in from other states, and thousands of people. Buses emptying out, banners, people camping.” In other words: the fear of becoming the next Wisconsin…Sen. Benson says that the threat of union payback at the ballot box “was enough to divide our caucus.” She attributes her colleagues’ reticence to their “justified concern that the unions, with their massive coffers, will come after people in swing districts.”
They also expressed that they didn’t want a repeat of last year’s Ohio referendum, where a high-profile
“Citizen Veto” of Gov. Kasich’s union-busting law continues to reverberate. Josh Eidelson of Salon calls them the “Cold Feet Caucus.”
As the session came to a close, some Republicans instead opted to reach across the aisle, working with Dayton to approve the construction of a new Vikings stadium. “Thanks to strong leadership from Governor Mark Dayton, Legislative DFLers, and several Republicans on job creation, the 2012 session was redeemed,” said Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson in a statement, “Between a jobs & infrastructure bill and a new stadium in downtown Minneapolis, tens of thousands of Minnesotans will soon be going back to work in good-paying, family sustaining jobs.”
That’s not to say Minnesotans can rest easy. In addition to holding anti-worker legislators accountable, the battle to defeat the voter suppression constitutional amendment is just beginning.
However, if that close election in 2010 had gone the other way, Minnesota working families would be in a much more perilous position: those 10 ALEC bills are just a sampling of what these radical legislature could have passed. From their rights to collectively bargain to their access to the courts, Minnesotans have a lot of reasons to be thankful for Gov. Dayton’s veto pen.
Tags: ALEC, Education, Jobs, Mark Dayton, Minnesota, voting rights
The following is a guest post from Nora Fredrickson, reposted from the AFL-CIO NOW Blog
Can a former coal miner win an election against a millionaire? Just ask Clyde McKnight.
A retired coal miner from southern West Virginia, he worked for more than 30 years in the mines and currently serves as the South Central AFL-CIO president. McKnight defeated millionaire and former gubernatorial candidate Melvin Kessler in the Democratic primary by a razor-thin margin of 52 votes this past Tuesday, a win in large part to the grassroots efforts of working people.
A former coal miner beating out a millionaire for a state representative seat was just one of the success stories in West Virginia’s primary election. More than one-third of the 100 candidates that the West Virginia AFL-CIOendorsed this year were union members. And they’re enjoying a high success rate –of the 34 union members who ran in the state primary on Tuesday, 30 won their races.
Many of these candidates see elected office as an extension of the work they are already doing within their unions to give back to their communities.
Drawing on his experience in the mines, McKnight campaigned on a platform of investing in affordable energy and bringing back American manufacturing. “As a coal miner, I understand the unique struggles we have in West Virginia,” McKnight said.
American manufacturing was built on affordable energy, on coal. We can’t afford gas prices at almost $4 per gallon.
On June 5th, voters in Wisconsin will go to the polls in an historic recall election, where they will decide who will serve as Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and State Senator in several districts for the rest of the current term. Nearly all the elected officials targeted by recall, who are in danger of being removed from office on the June 5th ballot, have something else in common: past or present affiliation with the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.
At the center of the firestorm is Governor Scott Walker, who earned the ire of Wisconsin voters for his relentless drive to restrict collective bargaining rights for 350,000 state workers, as well as his negligence toward Wisconsin’s job crisis. But before he became a household name, Walker served in the State Assembly from 1993-2002, where he was an ALEC member from 1995-1998.
During that time, Walker worked with fellow ALEC politician Governor Tommy Thompson to pass a model “Truth in Sentencing Bill,” which was developed by ALEC’s now-shuttered Public Safety and Elections Task Force. The bill required all criminal defendants to serve “no less than 85 percent” of the sentence imposed. For those convicted of violent crime, the bill called for them to serve 100 percent of the sentence imposed by the court; no parole, and no chance for early release.
This bill was developed specifically to benefit an ALEC member corporation, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which for many years housed overflow Wisconsin inmates in other states. CCA was on ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Force at the time.
Walker’s Lieutenant Governor, former TV anchor Rebecca Kleefisch, has not previously held office, and therefore has not officially been an ALEC member. However, the three Senators targeted for recall on June 5th are all members of ALEC task forces, as was Sen. Pam Galloway, who was targeted for recall before she resigned in March.
- Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), like Gov. Walker was a member of the ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force, which helped develop model Stand Your Ground and voter suppression bills. He also served as ALEC State Chairman.
- Sen. Terry Moulton (R-Chippewa Falls) was a member of ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force, which developed model bills that cut state worker pensions and gave tax handouts to corporations.
- Sen. Van Wanggard (R-Racine) was also a member of ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force.
ALEC’s influence over Wisconsin legislators also extends to taxpayer pocketbooks. Fitzgerald, Moulton, and Wanggard are three of 12 Republican State Senators who used taxpayer funds to help pay for their ALEC membership fees.
When we talk about the uprising in Wisconsin, we frequently talk about the way Walker and his allies have attacked workers’ rights, or ignored the jobs crisis. But folks are also upset by the idea that these politicians just don’t have their best interests in mind, in matters ranging from voting rights and public safety to the regulation of drinking water.
As the records show, Walker, Fitzgerald, Wanggard, and Moulton are affiliated with an organization that seeks to impose with narrow, corporate, profit-oriented goals into the laws that govern our communities. All of them have sat down at a table where corporations and legislators are equals and developed pieces of model legislation, many of which have become the law of the land in Wisconsin.
They are all subject to recall on June 5th in part because the people of Wisconsin want true legislators, true public servants; not just human delivery systems for ALEC’s cookie-cutter, corporate-backed agenda.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and her allies in the state legislature are seeking to use millions of dollars intended for struggling homeowners to pay for prison construction and tax cuts instead, echoing a policy put in place earlier this year in Wisconsin by Governor Scott Walker.
Remember the $26 billion foreclosure settlement, the one agreed upon by the five biggest banks and 49 state Attorneys General? As one of the hardest hit states, Arizona is getting $1.6 billion, as well as an additional $97.7 million to be overseen by the office of Attorney General Tom Horne, to be used for “housing counselors, legal aid, hotlines, and to help stressed homeowners with their payments.”
Two main things to understand about these funds: they are wildly insufficient given the scale of the problem, but all the same they are extremely crucial. In March, Arizona had the highest foreclosure rate in the country, according to RealtyTrac, with 9,497 foreclosures. If any state needs all the help it can get when it comes to homeowner education, assistance, and relief, it’s Arizona.
Even so, Governor Brewer and Republican state legislators want to siphon $50 million from those funds to “relieve pressure on the budget.” So in other words, use money intended to help homeowners for…other things.
Lawmakers say the money amounts to a pricey outreach and education fund. It won’t hurt to take half of it, House Speaker Andy Tobin said.
“We’re using the funds to relieve the pressure on the budget,” said Tobin, R-Paulden. Those stresses range from a push to replace welfare dollars lost to federal budget cuts to prison construction, he said.
How is this justified? You can thank a loophole in the settlement language, which says the funds can be used “to compensate the state for costs resulting from the alleged unlawful conduct of the defendants.” Arizona lawmakers like House Speaker Tobin are claiming that since foreclosure fraud hurt homeowners, which in turn hurt tax revenues and by extension the state budget, they can use the money for whatever they damn well please.
They can make this logical jump without acknowledging a.) that the big banks committed any actual fraud, or b.) that maybe Gov. Brewer’s $538 million tax handouts to businesses has anything to do with budget problems.
What’s scarier is that this move by Arizona is not unprecedented. They are doing exactly what Gov. Scott Walker already did in Wisconsin.
In February, Walker and Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen decided to use $25.6 million of Wisconsin’s share of the foreclosure fraud settlement to plug holes in his state budget. For justification, he used the very same loophole in the settlement language:
“Just like communities and individuals have been affected, the foreclosure crisis has had an effect on the state of Wisconsin, in terms of unemployment. . . . This will offset that damage done to the state of Wisconsin,” Walker said.
A week later, Missouri followed suit, taking $40 million from their share for the state’s general fund. Ohio decided to allocate $75 million meant for homeowner assistance to actually demolish vacant homes. South Carolina legislators insidiously pushed for using $31 million of settlement funds for corporate tax breaks.
Of all the horrific policies that have come out of the offices of governors like Walker in the past two years, this is one of the worst – and the most under-reported. With Walker and Brewer giving out huge tax handouts to businesses, cutting services and education, and then dipping into foreclosure fraud assistance to pay for their bad decisions, they are no different than a modern day Bonnie and Clyde. Robbery in multiple steps is still robbery, even if you’re a governor.
Tags: Arizona, foreclosure, Housing, Jan Brewer, Scott Walkerf, Wisconsin
We’ll be covering the election results live as they come in tonight starting at 7:30pm. Join us on Twitter at @WorkingAmerica
Today, voters in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Indiana will go to the polls to nominate candidates and make their voices heard on certain issues. All three states have unique races that will reverberate far beyond their borders.
North Carolina. Voters will choose Democratic and Republican nominees for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Treasurer, and other statewide positions. With Governor Bev Purdue retiring after her first term, former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory is expected to become the Republican nominee, while the Democratic slot is between Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton and former-Rep. Bob Etheridge.
But the most interesting development is actually a ballot amendment, known as “Amendment 1,” which would add a ban of same-sex marriage to the state constitution. North Carolina already has a ban in state law, and Amendment 1 goes further to bar the state from recognizing any legal domestic union other than marriage.
Director of Personnel Linda Coleman is seeking to succeed Dalton as Lt. Governor, and State Treasurer Janet Cowell is running for reelection.
Indiana. Hoosier voters are expected to make history tonight in the Republican Primary for U.S. Senate. Six-term incumbent Dick Lugar is trailing Tea Party primary opponent Richard Murdouck. If Lugar loses, he’d be the first six-term incumbent to lose in a primary since 1952.
Some are also looking at this race to gauge if the Tea Party will be as big a factor in the 2012 election as they were in 2010. Democrats are also watching: polling shows that a (relatively) moderate Lugar would easily beat any Democratic challenger in the general election, while a Tea-flavored Murdouck nomination would result in a tied race with expected Democratic nominee Rep. Joe Donnelly. So who will win – the Tea Party firebrand or the safe pick?
Wisconsin. And now, our feature presentation. After Wisconsinites turned in nearly a million signatures to trigger recall elections, May 8 was the date set by the state’s elections board to choose the Democratic nominee to take on Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and four of their allies in the State Senate.
As we wrote last month, the Wisconsin Republican Party decided to “protest” the recalls by running “Fake Democrats” as primary opponents. Scott Walker has not expressed any disapproval about this tactic, even though it ends up costing taxpayers more money. Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate Majority Leader and recall target, even suggested to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Republican voters should crossover just to meddle in the Democratic primary. “There’s nothing to keep the Republicans from messing around,” he said.
The race to take on Walker is largely between Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk. Mahlon Mitchell, the president of the Wisconsin Association of Firefighters, is expected to be nominated as Democratic challenger to Lt. Gov. Kleefisch. Firefighters and police officers gave a boost to the Wisconsin revolt when they joined the historic protests in Madison against Walker’s collective bargaining ban, even though they had been exempted from it.
Join us on Twitter tonight at @WorkingAmerica as we’ll be giving live election updates as they come in.
