Labor crushes Kasich and SB 5 in Ohio

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Associated Press has called it — Issue 2 (SB 5), the bill to strip unions of collective bargaining rights, has been defeated going down 2-1 at this point.

FAUX News host Gov. John Kasich has suffered a humiliating defeat. This was a classic overreach by Tea-Publicans in their war against organized labor and the working class.

The Koch brothers, Liz Cheney, Karl Rove and a host of other far-right interest groups with undisclosed donors thanks to Citizens United v. FEC dumped millions of dollars into this fight, and resorted to dirty tricks in the end.

Organized Labor countered this flood of money with a massive ground game. A coalition of Democratic and labor forces gathered 1.3 million signatures to put the new law on the ballot (only about 231 thousand were needed), which triggered Tuesday’s statewide vote.

Greg Sargent reported today Labor bets it all on Ohio – The Plum Line:

In case you need another sign of just how big a deal a win in Ohio would be for labor today, an AFL-CIO official sends over some statistics tallying up just how massive the union federation’s ground game has been in this fight:

* 4.1 million worksite fliers

* Over 3,000 worksites leafletted

* 1,101,751 doors knocked

* 825,000 pieces of local union mail

* 409,318 tele-town hall participants.

And that’s not even including today’s get-out-the-vote activities.

Those are striking numbers, and coming on top of at least $24 million raised by unions in this fight, they’re a reminder that if labor wins today it will be as much a result of the amount of work unions poured into this fight as it is a reflection of anything else.

In this case, labor has proven that there is sometimes a serious political price to be paid for this type of overreach.