Main Street

Seeing worker anger in Wisconsin, Ohio Gov. Kasich seeks compromise

Ohio Governor John Kasich came into office swinging against teachers, police officers, and other public employees. Alongside his allies in the legislature, he pushed through Senate Bill 5, which would strip away collective bargaining rights for 360,000 Ohio workers. Even when pro-worker groups collected 1.5 million signatures to put the repeal of Senate Bill 5 to a referendum, Kasich remained unapologetic.

However, after seeing the results of the Wisconsin recall elections, during which working families rose up and took away Gov. Scott Walker’s working majority in the state senate, something changed. Not 24 hours after the polls had closed in Wisconsin, Gov. Kasich held a press conference and proposed a compromise:

Gov. John Kasich pleaded with organized labor leaders today to compromise on Senate Bill 5 and cancel a fall referendum on the controversial bill that peels back public employee collective bargaining rights.

Kasich said avoiding a fight over state Issue 2 is in “best interest of everyone, including public employee unions.” He asked the unions to “set aside political agendas and past offenses.

Hmm. Avoiding a fight? Set aside past offenses? This is John Kasich, the same man who:

• Described his political agenda like this just three days after his election: “If you think you’re going to stop us, you’re crazy. You will not stop us. We will beat you…If you’re not on the bus, we’ll run over you with the bus. And I’m not kidding.”

• Demanded that Ohio teachers unions take out a full page ad apologizing for not supporting his campaign.

• Repeatedly and publicly called a police officer who gave him a moving violation an “idiot” – shortly before pushing legislation that would take away bargaining rights from all Ohio police officers.

Yet, here is Governor Kasich – “pleading” in the words of the Columbus Dispatch – that opponents of Senate Bill 5 compromise instead of going ahead with the repeal effort.

What changed?

Make no mistake: John Kasich is spooked by what happened in nearby Wisconsin. The Wisconsin elections ousted two entrenched Republican Senators from office, and the GOP’s attempts to recall three members of the Democratic “Wisconsin 14” were defeated with embarrassingly-high margins.

In his own state, working families collected six times the number of signatures needed to get SB 5 repeal on the ballot, and polling shows it would go down hard if they election was held today. Due in part to SB 5 and his personal intransigence, Kasich himself has approval numbers that one blogger called “eye poppingly horrible.”

After all his talk and bluster, Ohioans know the truth: Kasich’s anti-worker, corporate-backed policies are bad for Ohio, bad for the economy, and bad for working families.

Moreover, those policies are bad for the very people who voted him into office last fall, who responded to his promises for job creation and economic growth that have gone unfulfilled.