Super Tuesday: Labor Unions Lose Their Political Punch

In today’s Washington Examiner, the always interesting Michael Barone dissects Labor’s big loss in Arkansas:

She wanted to win reelection and knew that card check was political poison in almost entirely non-unionized Arkansas.

Big labor decided to teach her–and all Democratic members of Congress who were quailing at the prospect of voting for card check–a lesson. The lesson would be that, however much a vote for card check would reduce your chances of winning a general election, opposition to card check would result in your defeat in a Democratic primary. Their ready and willing instrument was Bill Halter, whose path to higher office seemed otherwise occluded. At the beginning of March he announced his candidacy and proclaimed himself the champion of the working man. Blanche Lincoln, in agonized response, proclaimed herself the target of outside interests. In a matter of weeks labor unions and moveon.org–originally formed to defend Bill Clinton against impeachment–sent millions to Bill Halter’s campaign. Lincoln, recently elevated to the Chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee, sponsored a bill to shut off all derivative trading. The Obama White House carefully protected this bill from defeat while the primary and runoff contests were pending, while Bill Clinton campaign gallantly for Lincoln and against his appointee Halter.

The Clinton intervention may have proved decisive. Although the Clintons have left Arkansas, Arkansas voters still have warm feelings toward them, as witnessed by Hillary Clinton’s 70%-26% defeat of Barack Obama in the 2008 Arkansas Democratic presidential primary–the biggest percentage win in her campaign. Lincoln won the runoff by a 52%-48% margin–hardly inspiring but a whole lot better than a defeat.

It’s a huge defeat for the unions. White House political operatives are already complaining, as Ben Smith notes in Politico, that “Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise,” [a senior White House] official said. “If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November.” But the unions are not just interested in maintaining Democratic majorities. They’re interested in making sure that all Democratic incumbents will vote when bidden for card check. The message they wanted to send to Blanche Lincoln, and to all other Democrats, was: the minute you announce against card check, your career is over. Even in a state like Arkansas, with few union members and with all the major employers solid opponents of unionization, we can defeat you in the Democratic primary. You may very well fear likely defeat in the general election if your support card check. But we can promise you certain defeat in the primary if you oppose it. And to national Democratic strategists they could say this: Lincoln was going to lose the general election in any case. We just made her path to defeat more unpleasant.

Bill Halter, who remained coy about his own position on card check, was the willing accomplice in this strategy. With not a lot to lose (the lieutenant governorship? give me a break; it was a nice office for a billionaire like Winthrop Rockefeller but doesn’t offer much to anyone else) and something to gain (maybe John Boozman would self-destruct in the general election for the Senate), this may have looked to him like a low-risk candidacy. His willingness to be the accomplice of the big labor unions might foreclose any future electoral career in Arkansas (although Bill Clinton’s rebounds after adversity might give any Arkansas Rhode Scholar hope for recovery). But there are other ways the big unions can help you advance.

Blanche Lincoln’s (narrow) victory leaves the unions’ strategy in ruins. They can’t credibly threaten any Democratic incumbent who opposes card check with political defeat. Some, in states less anti-union than Arkansas, might be vulnerable to a challenge like Halter’s; but others won’t. And in some states or districts there won’t be an opportunistic challenger like Halter willing to go along with the strategy and well enough established to be a serious primary challenger. Give the unions credit for daring, and for putting their money (or the money of their members) on the line. They’re playing for high stakes–for the ability to plunder the private sector for dues money as they have successfully plundered the public sector (i.e., taxpayers) for dues money in states with strong public employee unions like New York, New Jersey and California. They just came up a little bit short.

Read the whole thing here.

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