Although conservative candidates performed surprisingly well across the nation, taking control of the U.S. Senate and picking up additional seats in the House, the biggest losers of the 2014 midterm elections weren’t liberal politicians. They were big-government unions.
From the U.S. Congress to the Washington State Legislature, union-backed candidates and ballot initiatives were consistently repudiated by voters. The following are some of the more noteworthy examples.
1. Governorships:
Conservative gubernatorial candidates fared well across the country in both traditionally red states like Kansas and some deeply blue states like Maryland and Massachusetts.
Several conservative reformers in particular were targeted by Big Labor, including Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Michigan’s Rick Snyder, Florida’s Rick Scott, Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett and Ohio’s John Kasich. The AFL-CIO announced plans earlier this year to spend $300 million seeking to oust these GOP incumbents. With the exception of Corbett, all had presided over major labor reforms and won re-election. Corbett’s mistake was to draw union fire by expressing a willingness to sign pension reforms and paycheck protection legislation while doing very little to actually help such reforms become law.
In a further blow to the interests of entrenched government unions, Republican Bruce Rauner – who has been described by some labor sympathizers as “horrifically and historically anti-union” – unseated Democrat incumbent and union ally Pat Quinn in blue state Illinois. A “scheme” concocted by Quinn and the SEIU to force Medicaid-subsidized home care workers to pay union dues was recently struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Harris v. Quinn decision.
But it wasn’t only Republican governors who triumphed in spite of labor opposition. Democrat pension reformer Gina Raimondo beat Allan Fung, the union-backed Republican, by more than four percentage points to become the next governor of Rhode Island. Raimondo had been denounced as “the Democratic Scott Walker” by her opponents. For his part, Fung played up his union support, stating at one point, “The unions are there, and under my administration they’ll always have a seat across the table.”
2. Washington State Legislature:
Local labor unions pulled out all the stops in an attempt to prevent conservatives from maintaining their governing coalition in the state Senate, targeting swing district Republicans Andy Hill, Steve O’Ban, Doug Ericksen, Mark Miloscia and conservative Democrat Tim Sheldon. As the election dust settles, though, the “right-wingers who control the State Senate” have not only held their ground, but expanded their majority. Additionally, liberals’ grip on the state house has been weakened, with several tight races still to be decided.
The state House race in in the 17th district between Democrat incumbent Monica Stonier and Republican challenger Lynda Wilson stands out as a worthwhile reminder of the limits of unions’ political influence, despite their vast financial coffers of coercively collected union dues.
Stonier, a first-term representative and WEA member, narrowly won her election in 2012 by 139 votes with the support of $125,000 from the WEA. This time, however, Stonier is currently trailing Wilson by 753 votes, despite having received more than $240,000 in WEA support and an additional $100,000 from other unions.
3. Washington’s Initiative 1351
Billed as a “class-size reduction” initiative, I-1351 was backed exclusively by government unions, particularly the Washington Education Association (WEA) and its national affiliate. The unions poured more than $4.8 million into supporting the initiative, which would require the state to hire thousands of new union dues-paying teachers and support staff, even though class-size reductions beyond early grades do little to improve student achievement.
Despite the WEA/NEA’s sizeable investment, the amount of new dues generated from additional staff would pay for the entire costs of bankrolling the initiative in a matter of months.
Though no organized campaign was mounted to oppose I-1351, the Freedom Foundation, newspaper editorial boards and bipartisan political observers from around the state expressed significant concerns. At press time, the initiative was only barely passing, despite having polled at more than 60 percent in the weeks leading up to the election.
4. Seattle’s Proposition 1A:
In an election fight that pit city officials against SEIU Local 925 and the American Federation of Teachers, Seattle voters overwhelming approved a city-backed pre-K initiative (Prop 1B) and rejected a competing pre-K measure supported by the unions (Prop 1A). The union-funded “Yes for Early Success” PAC handily outspent proponents of the city’s plan, with SEIU and AFT contributing more than $1.1 million to support Prop 1A. While the city’s plan included no special benefits for labor, Prop 1A would have, among other things, expanded “training requirements for early childhood workers as well as union influence on that training” and required private child care facilities to immediately pay employees at least $15 an hour.
The lesson for lawmakers at both the national and local levels should be clear. The victory of conservative governors who championed labor reform proves government unions can be successfully challenged, if done with resolve and conviction.
As the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board noted, the lesson both Republicans and Democrats should take away from the 2014 midterms is that “public-union money can be defeated when the cause is just and you stand your ground.”
