It's not the "R" or "D" that counts. It's the "U."

By BERRY CRAIG

AFT Local 9005

A recent poll had Gov. Andy Beshear leading all four Republican frontrunners  who want his job.

But you can bet the one who wins the GOP primary in May will trot out the old social issues scam against Beshear, whom the Kentucky State AFL-CIO endorsed again. 

For the umpteenth time: The state AFL-CIO nod goes to candidates based on where they stand on union issues, not on their party affiliation. In other words, it's not the "D” or the “R” by the candidate’s name that counts. It's the “U” -union.

Never mind that Republicans sometimes gripe that your state AFL-CIO never endorses Republicans. “False,” said Liles Taylor, the federation’s political coordinator. 

He cited state Rep. Bobby McCool, R-Van Lear. “We worked hard to support him in his primary last year, after his own party redistricted him into a primary against Rep. Norma Kirk-McCormick (R-Inez), who had a lesser pro-union record.”

Also, the state AFL-CIO repeatedly endorsed the late state Sen. C.B. Embry, a Morgantown Republican. Bill Londrigan, Kentucky State AFL-CIO president, always corrected the longtime lawmaker when he’d brag about his 100 percent pro-labor voting record.

“I told him on several occasions, ‘C.B., you do not have a 100 percent record,'" Londrigan explained. "You have a 110 percent voting record because of all the pressure and browbeating that you got from your party during all those years.”

MOST UNION MEMBERS DON'T FALL FOR THE DIVIDE-AND-CONQUER PLOY

The social issues scam most often works in rural, Bible Belt states like ours. Well-heeled conservative politicians are good at conning less-than-well-heeled folks into voting on abortion, guns and other social issues--notably LGBTQ issues of late--instead of issues that affect their wallets. Pandering on immigration is a big part of their divide-and-conquer strategy, too. 

Most union members are onto the scam. In election after election, a majority of men and women who pack union cards in Kentucky and elsewhere vote for union-endorsed candidates.

You’d think it would be mission impossible to get folks who live a long way from Easy Street to vote against their own self-interest. But with the social issues scam, it’s been mission accomplished in a lot of places.  

"THE RIGHT WING ATTACK ON THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT"

The long-running scam is cynically designed "to distract and manipulate working class voters," warned Wisconsin State AFL-CIO researcher Joanne Ricca in “Politics in America: The Right Wing Attack on the American Labor Movement," a white paper published in 2002. It's as timely as ever.

Ricca added: "The Right's deliberate manipulation of voters through single issues--particularly abortion, gun control, school prayer, crime and taxes—has allowed candidates to conceal their real pro-corporate, anti-worker agenda."

Hence, "single issue politics was absolutely key to building the electoral base that the Right had lacked," Ricca explained. Firmly wedded to the Religious Right, conservative Republicans trotted out "scripture to mask Right Wing ideology," according to Ricca.

"Now they could convince sincere working people to vote against their own economic interests by manipulating their religious faith. Now they would be beyond criticism. They could attack anyone who tried to expose the real pro-corporate and anti-democratic agenda as being anti-Christian."

The media calls the GOP social issues scammers "cultural warriors.” Not coincidentally, they are almost always fiercely anti-union. 

Whatever else may divide them, the Republican candidates for governor are united in union-busting. They love the state's "right to work" law and the companion measure that repealed the state prevailing wage law. They're for gutting workers' compensation, unemployment insurance and the state Occupational Safety and Health programs, to boot.

In short, if it hurts unions, count them in. 

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS (OR KENTUCKY)

Two years after Ricca's study, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Stole the Heart of America hit the bookstores. It's still relevant, too.

The book could just as aptly be titled What's the Matter with Kentucky. Between its covers, the author, journalist and Kansas native Thomas Frank, described "the Great Backlash," meaning the joint Religious Right-Republican strategy of stoking "cultural anger" to win working class votes "with explosive social issues...to achieve economic ends." 

Frank wrote that Backlash leaders "may talk Christ, but they walk corporate. Values may 'matter most' to voters, but they always take a back seat to the needs of money once the elections are won."

Frank cited a "super average midwestern town" that could be almost anywhere--a slew of Kentucky towns from Jordan to Jenkins, for sure.

"Even as Republican economic policy has laid waste to the city's industries, unions, and neighborhoods, the townsfolk responded by lashing out on cultural issues, eventually winding up with a hard-right Republican congressman, a born-again Christian who campaigned largely on an anti-abortion platform."

Explained Frank: "Old-fashioned values may count when conservatives appear on the stump, but once conservatives are in office the only old fashioned situation they care to revive is an economic regimen of low wages and lax regulations....Thus the primary contradiction of the backlash: it is a working-class movement that has done incalculable, historic harm to working-class people."

MLK ON UNIONS

On the other hand, many people--including many union members--are led by their Christian faith to champion racial, social, political and economic justice. They go by the Golden Rule, versions of which are found in most major religions. 

"It’s all right to talk about long white robes over yonder, in all of its symbolism, but ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here," said Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. "It’s all right to talk about streets flowing with milk and honey, but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here and His children who can’t eat three square meals a day."

Unions are secular institutions. But they practice what King preached. 

King saw the civil rights and trade union movement as natural allies. He was murdered in Memphis where he went to stand in solidarity with striking sanitation workers who belonged to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

"Our needs are identical with labor's needs — decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community," he told the 1961 AFL-CIO convention. "That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.

In addition, he denounced RTW. “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work,’" he warned. "It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.”

MAPLES: "THE 'CULTURE WARS' ARE A FAKE WAR" 

Bruce Maples, who publishes the Louisville-based, progressive-leaning Forward Kentucky online, echoed Frank: “So, let’s be clear: the 'culture wars' are a fake war, made up by Republican strategists to rile up their right-wing, neo-Christian base, and to take the focus off of their reverse Robin Hood policy of robbing from the middle class and giving it to the wealthy.”

We often cross-post FK stories. Of late, we've been running our own stories that feature union leaders statewide sharing with us their suggestions on how we can best help reelect Gov. Beshear and our other endorsed candidates. Several respondents have said we've got to start in-house--educating our members about why he is the best candidate for us. Click here and here.

Maples had a proposal, too. Ask "culture warrior" candidates, "Do you really believe these things, or are you just mouthing them to turn out your voters? And if you DO really believe these things, can you tell all of us why?”

He concluded, The ‘culture wars’ issue is a Potemkin [phony] village used to score political points – and if you blow on it, it collapses.”

So the next time you hear "culture warriors" profess on the campaign trail, "I’m pro-God,” "I'm pro-life," and "I'm pro-Second Amendment," politely ask them where they are on our issues: "How do you stand on 'right to work,' the prevailing wage, strong worker safety and health laws and meaningful workers' compensation and unemployment insurance programs, public schools and tax fairness?"

Odds are, they'll respond like the horse trader of old who always showed prospective customers his teeth but never the horse's. If they dodge your questions, they'll confirm what you probably suspected: they're talking Christ and walking corporate.