http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edwin-d-hill/the-change-we-deserve_b_360684.htmlEdwin D. Hill
Posted: November 18, 2009 04:13 PM
It didn't take long for the anti-worker far right to try to spin the results of the 2009 elections as a mandate for their pro-corporate agenda.
According to conservative columnist Michael Barone, the biggest losers were not Democratic gubernatorial candidates Jon Corzine and Creigh Deeds but was the "union agenda."
And the anti-union corporate lobbying group Workforce Fairness Institute claimed that Republican Bob McDonnell's opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act -- the pending bill in Congress that will make it easier for a worker to join a union and collectively bargain - was key to his victory in Virginia's gubernatorial race -- despite the fact that McDonnell's Web site didn't mention EFCA once.
More serious Republican strategists are more likely to chalk up their party's victories to a general anti-incumbent mood, weak Democratic campaigns and GOP candidates who stayed focused on the message of job creation. Exit polls showed that 71 percent of voters named health care or the economy as their top issues.
The reality is, in the one race where the right decided to make the Employee Free Choice Act a major issue -- in New York's highly contested special House election -- it blew up in the GOP's face, leaving the union-busters' agenda as the biggest loser.
The 23rd Congressional District hasn't sent a Democrat to Congress since the Civil War, but on Election Day it sent Democrat and Employee Free Choice Act supporter Bill Owens to the House of Representatives.
Owens' victory, along with John Garamendi's in California' 10th District, added two additional congressional votes for health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act -- both at the top of the labor movement's policy agenda.
FULL story at link.
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