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On Labor and Dumb Electoral Politics

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I did a stretch of seven years in Los Angeles so I keep my ear to the ground on whatever is happening there in the house of labor. The last couple of weeks, I keep hearing from friends who are holding their breathe, hoping that Antonio Villaraigosa beats incumbent Mayor Jim Hahn in the election next week. So, what has this got to do with labor?

The endorsement of Hahn by the County Fed has made many labor activists and leaders unhappy. I’ve had a hard time trying to explain the endorsement to my non-labor friends. Sure, Hahn has given important commission seats to most of the bigger union’s leadership and they pushed his endorsement through. But, c’mon, he’s a hack. And labor was behind Villaraigosa the first time he ran for mayor. Fact is, a lot of the folks I know are privately supporting Villaraigosa and giving him money. They won’t say anything publicly because they don’t want to reveal fissures in a labor movement already in trouble.

One labor person who I’ve known for some time even wonders whether the stress of the Hahn endorsement contributed to the sudden and shocking death of L.A. County Fed Secretary-Treasurer Miguel Contreras, who died over the weekend at the young age of 52. As my friend relates it, Contreras and Villagarsa were good friends. But, the institution demanded that Contreras campaign against his friend. Contreras was in a no-win situation: backing a candidate (Hahn) he knew would lose, being beaten up by some of the press for selling out to Hahn and being beaten up by affiliates who were blaming him for not doing enough for Hahn. And, a “minor” additional headache: the county Fed stands to lose about 40 percent of its revenues when SEIU pulls out of the AFL-CIO, which will happen no later than right after the July AFL-CIO convention.

Is this what we think will lead us back to having power? Endorsing a clearly inferior person over a superior person of color simply because a few labor people got some patronage? And L.A. is not the only place that we’re making questionable choices. Already, the building trades in New York City have endorsed Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg simply because he supports building the friggin’ Jets stadium on the West Side of Manhattan (and, for those of you who read this space regularly, you know I’m a sports fan–I just think it’s a crime to use public money to erect these edifices, most, if not all, of which prove to bring very little long-term benefit to the cities that pour scarce tax receipts into these projects).

And, talk about timing, on the topic of labor’s endorsement of Hahn, Marc Cooper has a good piece in The Nation (full text available only for subscribers).

Actually, the title of this post has many stories that could be told. Maybe we’ll turn that into a regular feature. Send me your nominations—with details.


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