Think Again •
BARGAIN COUNTER
EE
R
F
By Tim Nesbitt
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DEADLINE: Friday prior to publication
The Working Families Party
rewrites the script for pro-worker politics
W
e may have found a new an-
swer to the question,
“What’s the matter with Kansas?”
Author Thomas Frank posed that
question in the title of his much-cited
book that explores “how conserva-
tives won the heart of America.” It’s a
question that resonates in every state
where working people continue to
vote for politicians who support trade
deals that trash our jobs, bail out cor-
porations that renege on their retire-
ment promises and let employers like
Wal-Mart encourage their workers to
sign up for health insurance paid by
us taxpayers.
The new answer to that question
comes from New York, where the
Working Families Party is using old-
fashioned issues organizing and an
electoral system that empowers minor
parties to force both Democrats and
Republicans to pay attention to its
pro-worker agenda.
New York may be a blue state in
presidential elections, but it has a Re-
publican governor, and Republicans
control one legislative chamber. So if
the Working Families Party can force
a minimum wage increase through
New York’s Legislature and override a
gubernatorial veto, as it did last year,
perhaps it offers something worth
copying in red states like Kansas and
blue states like Oregon and Washing-
ton.
What Frank dissects in his book
about Kansas is the politics of diver-
sion. Working people might wake up
worrying about the cost of health care
50 weeks out of the year. But, some-
how, during the two weeks before an
election, they start obsessing about
their right to keep their guns or some-
one else’s right to marry a person of
the same sex — and those issues sud-
denly overwhelm the debate about
how we can make health care more
affordable.
Then those hot-button social issues
start to fade the day after the election,
and working people start worrying all
over again about rising health care
costs and their shrinking family budg-
ets.
The antidote to the politics of di-
version is the politics of focus: Stick
to the issues that matter and keep talk-
ing to voters, 52 weeks a year, about
what their elected officials are doing
to help or hurt their jobs and their
families’ well-being.
I noted in this column last year
how the AFL-CIO’s Working Amer-
ica program is doing exactly that. But
the Working Families Party does that
and more. Because it is a political
party, it has the right to nominate can-
didates in federal, state and local elec-
tions. And, because New York’s elec-
tion laws encourage major party
candidates to seek and run with the
endorsement of minor parties, the
Working Families Party has maxi-
mized the power of its ballot line to
bring wayward Democrats home on
pocketbook issues and attract Repub-
licans who support a good jobs
agenda.
New York’s system of voting is
called “fusion.” It sounds arcane, but
we used to have this system in Ore-
gon and Washington, until big-money
interests forced its repeal in the early
1900s. It allows minor parties to co-
endorse candidates of the major par-
ties and present those candidates sep-
arately to the voters on the minor
party’s ballot line; then it combines or
“fuses” the votes that candidates re-
ceive when they appear more than
once on the ballot. With this system,
minor parties are no longer forced to
play the role of spoilers in elections.
When they organize well on issues
that resonate with the voters, they can
bring the major party candidates to
their doorstep, begging for that extra
listing on the party’s ballot line that
can mean the difference between win-
ning and losing a close election.
The experience in New York also
shows that working people, who may
be divided over the Democratic and
Republican Party platforms on social
issues, are often willing to set those
concerns aside and cast their votes for
candidates of either party who support
pro-worker positions on economic is-
sues. When they can vote for a candi-
date on the ballot line of a party that
represents clear solutions to their
everyday concerns, they’re no longer
faced with the dilemma of wasting
their vote in order to send a message
to the top candidates.
Fusion voting gives more power to
the voters, who can both send a mes-
sage to a candidate and put that candi-
date in office with votes attached to
their message.
There’s a song about New York
that says if you can make it there, you
can make it anywhere. The Working
Families Party is taking its show on
the road now with the promise of fo-
cus and fusion as the means to force
politicians to deliver for working fam-
ilies again, state by state. That show
will be playing at the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union
Hall in Portland Friday, Feb. 3, and it
could be ready for a long run.
For more information, go to
www.oregonwfp.org.
PAGE 6
Wilma Liebman.
During the holiday recess Bush also
appointed Ronald Meisburg to serve as
general counsel of the NLRB. Meisburg
served on the NLRB from Jan.12, 2004
to Dec. 8, 2004, also under a recess ap-
pointment by Bush.
Walsh served as a Board member
from Dec. 30, 2000 to Dec. 20, 2001
under a recess appointment by Presi-
dent Bill Clinton, and again from Dec.
17, 2002, to Dec. 16, 2004, after being
nominated by Bush and confirmed by
the Senate. During the past year Walsh
has been on Liebman’s legal staff.
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(Full disclosure: During the past
month, I have been paid to provide
consulting services to the Working
Families Party in Oregon and Wash-
ington. But I was not asked to write
this column, nor was I compensated
for writing this column.)
Tim Nesbitt is a former president of
the Oregon AFL-CIO.
Bush makes recess appointments to NLRB
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President
George W. Bush last month made two
recess appointments to the five-member
National Labor Relations Board. On
Jan. 4 he appointed Republican Peter
Kirsanow, and on Jan. 17 he named De-
mocrat Dennis Walsh to serve on the
Board. Under recess appointments they
can serve until the adjournment of Con-
gress in 2007.
This marks the first time that the
NLRB has been at full strength since
December 2004. The current members
are Republicans Robert Battista, chair,
and Peter Schaumber, and Democrat
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