Over at Seattle's SLOG, Goldy asks the question "Could Washington Be the Next Wisconsin?"
Anti-labor Attorney General Rob McKenna is the odds-on favorite to win the Washington gubernatorial contest in 2012. A McKenna win could be a disaster.
Masquerading as a moderate, McKenna, who is suing to get health care reform repealed, is an anti-union, anti-government teabagger with a Gingrich-esque view of President Obama:
We have a man who, as president, is far to the left of center, farther to the left of center, I should say, than any American president we have ever seen. Farther to the left than FDR.
Excerpts from Goldy's piece:
As a councilman, on five separate occasions, McKenna refused to approve collective bargaining agreements between the county and public workers [snip] He led efforts to prevent the county from doing business with union shops, bizarrely disparaging as "racist and sexist" an ordinance requiring the county to hire union apprentices. In 1998, McKenna even voted against a motion that urged an employer to (gasp) "bargain with its employees in good faith".
As attorney general, McKenna has continued his efforts to undermine unions [snip] McKenna's first appearance before the US Supreme Court was an appeal of a state supreme court ruling that had granted teachers' unions the right to use members' dues for political purposes.
...in 2010, acting as the keynote speaker at an Association of Washington Business luncheon, McKenna presented its better workplace award to Cairncross & Hempelmann, a law firm that advises managers on how to see the "warning signs of union organizing efforts" and "put policies in place to limit unionization efforts on your properties."
The Washington State Democrats are already attacking McKenna on his anti-labor resume, releasing this ad a few days ago.
McKenna's likely opponent is Congressman Jay Inslee. Inslee is a good man and excellent Congressman. He is an environmentalist and friend of labor. Recently he voted against extension of the Bush tax cuts. He'll be a great governor, but in order to get elected he is going to have to overcome an onslaught of outside money, a media that is totally smitten by McKenna, and a public image of the boyish Attorney General as a reasonable, moderate, nice young man.
Washington hasn't elected a Republican governor since 1981. We are going to need a lot of outside help if we are going to keep that streak alive.
You can help keep the above ad in the papers by making a donation to the Washington State Democrats. We don't want to be the next Wisconsin.