THE SMITH CENTER

for Private Enterprise Studies

Lessons For Unions From 2002 Elections

by

David Denholm, President
Public Service Research Foundation
Vienna, VA 22180

The 2002 elections are almost history but they are already historic. For the first time ever the party of a sitting President in his first term captured control of the U.S. Senate. In addition, the President's party reversed the historic trend of losing House seats in the off year election.

There are undoubtedly many contributing factors in this highly unusual outcome but the role of organized labor's special interest is certainly a major one of them.

Union special interests played a major role in the outcome of two crucial elections for the U.S. Senate, Georgia and Missouri, where Republicans defeated incumbent Democrats Max Cleland and Jean Carnahan.

The buzzword in these races was "national security." The real issue was the Senate's refusal to act on the bill to create a Department of Homeland Security. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle refused to allow the Senate to vote on this bill because, as Senator Trent Lott so succinctly put it, "The unions won't accept it."

What wouldn't the unions accept? They would not allow President Bush the power to exempt federal employees from certain civil service protections when they were engaged in sensitive national security and intelligence activities. This is a power that every President has had since Congress enacted the Civil Service Reform Act in 1978. The real issue for the unions was that a union would no longer represent some of the employees who would be transferred into the new department. There is good evidence that maintaining this dubious privilege is of far more concern to the unions than it is to the employees.

This might not have mattered if Senators Cleland and Carnahan had come from a state like New York or California where union control of government is taken for granted, but Georgia and Missouri are two of the states that have resisted the Sirens call of monopoly union bargaining in public employment. The voters in these states were not as understanding when it came to obstructing the President's program because "the unions won't accept it."

The problem goes deeper than that for Senators Cleland and Carnahan. Both of them were cosponsors of legislation that would use the power of the federal government to impose unionism and collective bargaining on state and local police and fire departments. Again, this would have been no big deal if they were from a state that already had a government unionism law but this legislation would have had a very negative impact on Georgia and Missouri. Local elected officials in those states, people who are the bulwark of the Democratic Party, were well aware of it and were not pleased. It is impossible to tell how much this cost them. But, when an election is decided by a few percent of the vote, such slavish devotion to union special interests undoubtedly cost them more votes than it gained.

This isn't idle speculation. In the same election Missouri voters rejected a ballot proposition giving fire fighter unions monopoly bargaining privileges. Missouri wasn't the only state where voters opposed empowering public sector unions in the 2002 elections. In Michigan, a state more sympathetic to unions, the voters defeated a ballot measure imposing collective bargaining on state government employees.

The 2002 elections hold yet another lesson for the unions. One of the bright spots for the Democratic Party was the gain of governorships in several major states. In the Democratic primary in Michigan unions supported the losing candidate, and the winner, Jennifer Granholm, went on to win the general election. In the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania unions supported the loser, and the winner, Ed Rendell, went on to win the general election. In Florida, however, unions supported Bill McBride in the Democratic primary. He won the primary but then lost the general election decisively.

There is yet more evidence that allowing union special interests to dominate the Democratic Party's decisions is hurting them. One of the showcase governors elections was in Maryland where Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was a presumed heir to the governor's mansion. So strong was this belief that she was prominently mentioned as a rising star in the Democratic party at the national level. She was defeated by Republican Congressman Robert Erhlich. Maryland is an overwhelmingly Democratic state. Much of Townsend's problem was the unpopularity of Governor Paris Glendening, who had alienated many constituencies by using the power of his office to strong-arm through one new union special privilege after another during his tenure.

These historic election results hold many lessons for the Democrats and their union masters. But, if history is any guide, the lessons will probably be ignored.