From The Huffington Post: How Labor Won The Right-To-Work Fight In Missouri
It turns out that unions run a fearsome ground game when they need to
By DAVE JAMIESON
Missouri voters resoundingly rejected the state’s new right-to-work statute by referendum Tuesday night, delivering a stinging rebuke to the GOP legislature that recently tried to implement the law. The vote on Proposition A wasn’t even close: The “no” crowd defeated the “yes” crowd by a 2-to-1 margin.
So how did unions pull off such a lopsided win in a red state dominated by GOP politics?
For starters, the pro-union side appears to have outspent the anti-union side.
With a rare opportunity to kill a law that would reduce union membership in the state, the labor-backed group We Are Missouri poured over $15 million into the campaign. The two largest groups on the other side of the issue, Freedom to Work and Missourians for Freedom to Work, spent a combined $3.2 million, according to the Missouri Ethics Commission.