Really bad things come from sitting on the sidelines
By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 1360
"We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines this election," Shawn Drake of Louisville Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 502 warned Kentucky union members in a 2016 UA video that's still on YouTube.
Another crucial election cycle starts Tuesday with a special state Senate contest in easternmost Kentucky. Next come the primaries on May 21. The payoff arrives on Nov. 5 when we vote for governor and constitutional offices, none more important to us than attorney general and secretary of state.
When elections roll around, most union members get off the sidelines and get in the game. If everybody voted the way we do, Democrat Jack Conway would be up for a second term, the Democrats would control the General Assembly and Kentucky wouldn't be a "right to work" state. (The state AFL-CIO endorses pro-labor Republicans though these days they're an endangered species.)
Anyway, the video featured some UA members from across the state. Everybody stressed how important the election--especially House races--was to organized labor.
Drake and Matt Herron of Lexington Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 452 hammered home--hard--what would happen if the Republicans flipped the Democratic House. The legislature's lower chamber was all that was holding back a flood of union-busting legislation.
Warned Herron: "Kentucky's prevailing wage laws will be repealed and we'll become a 'right to work' for less state before the month of January is out....and what should scare every Plumber and Pipefitter even more is the fact that...not only will they pass these anti-union measures, we will not be able to undo them for at least a generation."
Warned Drake: "Even if our friends in labor came back and won control of the state House in the next election, 2018, and wanted to undo or reverse these anti-union measures, they couldn't because for any legislation to become law, it must also pass the State senate and with the overwhelming majority of anti-union members controlling the state Senate, there is absolutely no chance of that ever happening in my lifetime."
Matt Bevin, the field marshal in the Kentucky GOP's holy war against unions, is running for a second term. More than 69 percent of registered voters sat on the sidelines and didn't go to the polls when he won in 2015.
Bevin collected 511,771 votes. In other words, a shade less than 16 percentof signed-up voters put him in office. Take a minute to let that sink in.
The Trump tsunami swept away the Democratic House majority in 2016. We got RTW and prevailing wage repeal in 2017. Since, Bevin and the Republicans have gone after public pensions, workers compensation, unemployment insurance and Kentucky OSH. They're pushing school vouchers; Bevin aims to fatally weaken the labor cabinet by combining it with the public protection cabinet.
I'd bet next month's Social Security check that Herron and Drake would love to be proven wrong about union-busters ruling Frankfort for the foreseeable future. I'd also wager they're not giving up on working for and helping elect candidates who are in our corner.
"Set a stout heart to a steep hillside," is an old proverb from Scotland, from whence my ancestors came to America, via Northern Ireland, centuries ago.
There are steep hills aplenty in the Appalachian counties of the 31st Senate District where labor-endorsed Democrat Darrell Pugh is taking on Republican Phillip Wheeler at the polls tomorrow. (Ray Jones had to give up the seat when he was elected Pike County judge-executive last November--hence the special election.)
If Pugh wins, it will be an important hold for the Democrats. They can ill afford to lose any more seats in the Senate, where the GOP bulge is 28-9. (Last November, the Democrats dropped a Senate seat and managed only a net gain of two seats in the House, trimming the Republican majority to 61-39.)
The biggest hill looms in November. Polls show Bevin is vulnerable. Most polls also showed Conway would beat Bevin in 2015.
It's trite but true: "The only poll that counts is the one on election day."
Defeating Bevin is essential if the Democrats, and organized labor, are to tread the comeback trail. So "we cannot afford to sit on the sidelines in this election" works for 2019, too.