Ohio: Trade Union Leadership Supports Republican Against Working Class Democrat

Sean O’Torain

We have explained on this Blog how the top union leadership refuses to take on the anti union and anti working class policies of the capitalist Democratic Party. This piece from the New York Times below shows how the majority of the union leadership in this case even refused to support the more pro union Democratic Party candidate instead supporting the anti union Republican Party candidate. The new candidates who have been elected in the recent elections who claim to be "progressive”, especially the Democratic Socialists of America members who see themselves as socialists, have the responsibility to take on these false policies of the pro capitalist union leaders. This Blog does not believe it was the correct strategy for DSA members to stand as Democratic Party candidates but as they have done so and some been elected they must at least take up the struggle against the policies of the union leaders. 

This is similar to Colorado where in the race for Boulder County Commissioner the state AFL-CIO supported not a Republican but a right wing pro-fracking Democrat against his opponent Cliff Willmeng. Willmeng is a trade union member and environmental activist. Trade Unionist Runs For Office. AFL-CIO Leadership Backs the Democrat.

Here is a comment on this report in the New York Times from Michael Munk:

 Alec MacGillis writes in the NYT about a Ohio state legislature election:

"But most confounding [about the lack of support for a working class Dem] were the unions. One by one, they started supporting  [Repub] Jay Edwards. And not just the building-trades unions, which sometimes side with Republicans, but also the Service Employees International Union and the public sector unions — Afscme, the Ohio Education Association and the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association. The only endorsements Mr. Sappington received were from the National Association of Social Workers and the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers.

Mr. Sappington was stunned. He was about as pro-union as one could be. In his video, he had mentioned his earlier activism against the law that Ohio Republicans had pushed through in 2011 eliminating collective bargaining for public employees, which was later overturned by referendum. His mother had been active in Afscme; his brother belonged to the Civil Service Employees Association. And Mr. Sappington himself was a low-wage service worker. Yet he was losing labor support to a Republican who had supported a state budget that effectively reduced funding for education."

Michael Munk’s site is here: Michael Munk.com

Why the Perfect Red-State Democrat Lost

Taylor Sappington is exactly the kind of candidate his party should want in Ohio. But he couldn’t get union support.

By Alec MacGillis

Mr. MacGillis is a political reporter.
Nov. 16, 2018

Unlike many young Ohioans, Taylor Sappington, 27, of Nelsonville, decided to stay in his hometown after he graduated from college. CreditTy Wright for The New York Times

Taylor Sappington

Unlike many young Ohioans, Taylor Sappington, 27, of Nelsonville, decided to stay in his hometown after he graduated from college. CreditCreditTy Wright for The New York Times

Taylor Sappington heard the call like so many other Democrats in the year after Nov. 8, 2016. He had seen Donald Trump coming, homing in on his little town, Nelsonville, Ohio, in the state’s impoverished Appalachian southeast. The town of 5,300 people had voted for Barack Obama twice by large margins.

Mr. Trump was Nelsonville’s pick in 2016, though it was more by default than acclamation. Mr. Trump won there with less than a majority, with 30 percent fewer votes than Mr. Obama had gotten four years earlier. Mr. Sappington, a 27-year-old Ohio native, took this as evidence that Nelsonville was not beyond redemption, that the town where he had grown up in hard circumstances — the son of a single mother who was for a time on food stamps, living deep in the woods in a manufactured home — wasn’t really Trump country.

Not so long ago, Ohio was considered the quintessential swing state — it had, after all, voted for the winning presidential candidate in every election starting with 1964. Something happened this decade, though. The 2010 national “shellacking” of Democrats left a particularly strong mark in Ohio. The Republicans who assumed control of Columbus pulled off an aggressive gerrymandering of federal and state legislative districts. In 2012, when Mr. Obama won the state for the second time, Republicans held 12 of the state’s 16 congressional seats despite winning only 52 percent of the total House vote.

The state’s makeup had been trending red, too. At a time when the share of white voters without college degrees — who are fast becoming the Republican base — decreased nationwide, it held strong in Ohio. The state was drawing relatively few immigrants, its education system was sliding in national rankings and, with its smaller cities and towns falling far behind thriving Columbus, it was losing many young college grads to jobs out of state.

Not Taylor Sappington, though. He wanted to stay. He had gotten hooked on national politics in high school, around the time he read a book on Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 campaign. And he had gotten out of Nelsonville, winning nearly a full ride to George Washington University. Read the rest of this article here.