Dems hope Ohio union law defeat creates 2012 gains

ANN SANNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Buoyed by vot­ers’ over­whelm­ing rejec­tion of a Republican-backed union law, Ohio Democ­rats are look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on sup­port from labor groups that have tra­di­tion­ally favored GOP can­di­dates as their focus shifts to next year’s races and efforts to repeal early vot­ing changes and throw out a new con­gres­sional map.

Vot­ers on Tues­day hand­ily rejected a state’s law lim­it­ing the bar­gain­ing abil­i­ties of more than 350,000 teach­ers, fire­fight­ers, police offi­cers and other pub­lic work­ers. More than 61 per­cent voted against the mea­sure, known as Sen­ate Bill 5 in the Leg­is­la­ture and Issue 2 on the ballot.

Ohio Demo­c­ra­tic Party chair­man Chris Red­fern told reporters Wednes­day the party wants to cul­ti­vate the rela­tion­ships it has built with inde­pen­dent and Repub­li­can vot­ers who joined with Democ­rats to reject the union law.

“Sen­ate Bill 5 is dead,” Red­fern said. “The groundswell of activism it gen­er­ated lives on and will carry over into the 2012 cycle.”

If Democ­rats are able to main­tain those rela­tion­ships, it could boost their efforts to get Ohio vot­ers next year to over­turn a Republican-pushed law to shorten the state’s early vot­ing win­dow and reject the GOP’s newly drawn map of con­gres­sional districts.

One Demo­c­ra­tic con­gress­woman said Wednes­day she wasn’t cer­tain whether labor’s vic­tory would nec­es­sar­ily give her party an edge in 2012.

“Quite frankly, I’m not so sure that one has any­thing to do with the other,” U.S. Rep. Mar­cia Fudge, a Cleve­land Demo­c­rat, said in an inter­view. “Issue 2 was some­thing that all work­ing peo­ple in Ohio could coa­lesce around, no mat­ter their party.”

Still, she said she hopes it bodes well for Democ­rats “because I think the coali­tion that was built around Issue 2 is very strong.”

Mark Sanders, pres­i­dent of the Ohio Asso­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sional Fire Fight­ers, said the union mem­ber­ship is evenly split between Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans, “with a big slice of inde­pen­dents down the middle.”

He said the cam­paign to defeat the union law gal­va­nized mem­bers around the impor­tance of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights, and sparked sup­port for can­di­dates of both par­ties who opposed the bill.

But whether GOP fire­fight­ers have been soured on the party over­all is unclear, Sanders said.

“It’s no secret that we had a lot of mem­bers who voted for Gov. (John) Kasich, and I had it told to me time and time again, ‘This was not my Repub­li­can party, this was not my Repub­li­can val­ues,’” he said. “I think Issue 2 put just a lit­tle extra excla­ma­tion point on those val­ues, and mov­ing for­ward cre­ated a re-focus to look at each indi­vid­ual can­di­date a lit­tle more closely on the issues.”

Jay McDon­ald, pres­i­dent of the Ohio Fra­ter­nal Order of Police, said he hasn’t dis­cussed whether his group would con­tinue to work with more Democratic-leaning unions on future bal­lot issues.

Repub­li­cans have down­played any poten­tial carry-over effect from this November’s con­test into next. They point to strong approval for another Ohio bal­lot issue in which vot­ers rejected the health insur­ance man­date in Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

The health care bal­lot ques­tion was won by a wider statewide mar­gin than the defeat of the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing law.

Jeff Longstreth, cam­paign man­ager for Ohioans for Health­care Free­dom, said he saw Tuesday’s results as any­thing but a man­date for Democrats.

“It really sets up the 2012 elec­tion. Here you have the No. 1 swing state in the coun­try, about to vote for pres­i­dent and (Demo­c­ra­tic) U.S. Sen. Sher­rod Brown, and they vote against the president’s sig­na­ture pol­icy ini­tia­tive,” he said.

Posted by AP News on Nov 9 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.