In picking ‘wrong’ opponent, will labor wind up with no one sympathetic?

It was intriguing to see the Illinois Education Association make its “Anybody But Rahm” endorsement for the upcoming mayoral election.


For the labor union that represents adjunct faculty at various colleges in Chicago said it could live with either Robert Fioretti or Jesus “Chuy” Garcia as the city’s new mayor.


WHAT THEY REALLY do NOT want to see is “four more years” of Rahm Emanuel working on the fifth floor of City Hall. They’re perceiving Emanuel as being the city government equivalent of Gov. Bruce Rauner – who in recent days has been making all kinds of statements showing that he really is as hostile to organized labor as he appeared to be back during the primary election cycle last year.


Just as how the Chicago Teachers Union (which is a local within the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and not a part of the IEA) has long had its own quarrels with Emanuel, and earlier this week said it intends to stand up to anything Rauner tries to pull.

We’re getting the reminders of just how close Emanuel and Rauner are, and how I don’t doubt the new governor is hoping for the re-election of a Chicago mayor whom he probably envisions he can do business with on various issues affecting city and state government.

But this latest IEA endorsement doesn’t seem to me to amount to much. I think they really needed to pick somebody and give full support.

A DUAL ENDORSEMENT basically says that the union is for anybody who doesn’t vote for Emanuel – which could mean that there is no consolidation of support for a single challenger to Rahm.

That is what is really needed if there is to be any chance of replacing the incumbent mayor. Otherwise, all the opponents feed off each other – and the majority of people who would just as soon not see any kind of radical change will wind up banding together behind Emanuel.

Particularly since all the various political polls I have seen for the mayoral election cycle seem to indicate that Emanuel is extremely close to having enough support to win the mayoral campaign outright on Feb. 24.

Just a little more backing, and he certainly has the kind of campaign funding that could enable him to get it, and Emanuel will achieve that magical “50 percent plus 1” standard that would turn the April 7 run-off into a series of neighborhood contests to pick various aldermen.

TELLING THE PEOPLE who couldn’t get enough backing to oppose Emanuel back in 2011 that they should continue to split their support makes it seem like the IEA isn’t all that interested in dumping on the mayor.

At least not as much as he’ll likely dump all over them once he gets re-elected without their support.

It’s not like the Chicago Teachers Union, where President Karen Lewis has not let her health impediments interfere with her efforts to support a single challenger (Garcia) and is also making it clear she plans to throw her political muscle behind efforts to oppose Rauner’s desires to create “Right to Work”-like conditions in Illinois.

She may win. She may not. Who’s to say at this point? Other than to say she seems to be putting up a more credible political fight than the counterpart schools union (which gets its political bulk from suburban school districts).

FROM A LABOR perspective, I don’t doubt their worst nightmare is the idea of an Emanuel/Rauner pairing that runs the major local governments. It just seems like their efforts to fight that pairing from becoming reality may have been focused a little too much on City Hall and not on the Statehouse Scene.

Because propping up former Gov. Pat Quinn might have been easier for them than turning any of the four mayoral challengers into a winning candidate!

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What does it mean that a teachers’ union (allegedly) likes Dillard?

DILLARD: Do teachers really like him?

“Yawn!!!”

That’s about all the reaction I can generate from the word that the Illinois Education Association, whose locals represent schoolteachers throughout the suburbs and rest of the state, is telling its members they should support Kirk Dillard for governor in the upcoming Republican primary election.

IT WAS NEVER a secret that groups representing education interests don’t think much of the gubernatorial candidacy of Bruce Rauner – who is targeting his campaigning to reach out to the kinds of people who like to dump on organized labor any chance they get.

The various unions have said they are interested in trying to knock out Rauner now, so as to not have him gain any strength that might bolster him in the Nov. 4 general election cycle against Gov. Pat Quinn.

So the endorsement by this particular teachers’ union really means nothing more than that they find Dillard – the state senator from Hinsdale who thinks the fact that he was once chief of staff to Gov. Jim Edgar anoints him as the front-runner – less offensive than the other Republican candidates.

Yes, it’s true that the GOP political operatives are thinking that with the lack of a competitive primary fight for governor and other political posts (does anybody think Tio Hardiman can top 10 percent of the vote on March 18?), there may be many voters ideologically leaning toward Democrats who will shift political parties for the primary to cast a vote for Dillard.

I’M JUST NOT convinced that it will be all that many people. Heck, Hardiman could wind up getting more votes than does any Republican gubernatorial candidate from a voter who usually leans Democrat!

 

RAUNER: Labor's Public Enemy No. 1?

I am convinced this is a whole lot of blather. Dillard – whom that Tribune poll earlier this week showed running dead last in the GOP primary for governor – may well be too far down for this to make any difference.

And I really believe much of the vote influenced by organized labor interests is going to remain in line with its usual thought process.

So yes, I believe that Rauner’s camp is being absurd with its own attacks on Dillard – whom he is trying to lambast for having anything to do with labor unions in any form.

AS RAUNER POINTED out in a statement he released Friday, Dillard has received campaign contributions in excess of $500,000 from unions that deal with state government during his time as an elected official.



QUINN: Will labor come back to Pat?

Considering, however, that Dillard has been in elected office since 1995, that means a half million dollars during a nearly two-decade period. Which really isn’t that much – particularly since most of that sum came specifically for Dillard’s failed 2010 bid for governor.

It comes across less as an attack against Dillard and more like a whine by Rauner that he’s not the one who’s getting the money – and that someone would dare to differ with him!

That’s what happens when one flaunts their own money about for a political campaign and makes it clear they’re going to be immune to the thoughts of certain parts of the political spectrum. You gain an enemy on Election Day.

BESIDES, I THINK that when the general election comes about, many of the people who cross over to Dillard will wind up coming back to Quinn. This may well be just another reason why whoever does win the Republican primary will wind up too bloodied to wage a serious fight against Quinn.

Who’s going to be well-rested and flush with campaign cash!

This could wind up being the photographic negative image of the 1994 election cycle – where Dawn Clark Netsch blew her financial wad to win a gubernatorial primary, and Edgar wound up tagging her right away with a negative image – one that she didn’t have enough money on hand to counter.

Rauner won’t be that broke on March 19. But Quinn will launch his political attack probably at 12:01 a.m. that very day! Which may sound mean-spirited. Then again, who really roots for the rich guy to prevail on Election Day?

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FREHRICHS: The IFT-preferred pol

EDITOR’S NOTE: For what it’s worth, the Illinois Federation of Teachers (which includes the outspoken Chicago Teachers Union) isn’t backing anybody for governor on March 18. In fact, the only statewide election endorsement they have made is for Michael Frehrichs, the Democrat running unopposed for state treasurer. Which may be a bigger yawn than the IEA backing Dillard.

Teachers stepping up their fight

It has been intriguing to watch the e-mail messages flowing into my inbox in recent days. For it seems the unions that represent teachers are stepping up their own efforts to protect their own financial interests.

From the Chicago Teachers Union, which may well wind up walking the picket lines in coming weeks to try to force the Chicago Public Schools to give them a contract worthy of their work.

ALTHOUGH EVEN THE Illinois Education Association is joining in the effort, seeking to protect the interests of teachers in public school districts across the rest of the state.

They have come up with a poll concerning all the pension reform talk, which some people think could easily be fixed if only those school teachers weren’t so greedy.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been more publicly outspoken in trashing teachers and their unions than state officials have been. But the end result is the same. There are people who want to view school teachers as a problem.

Which is why I can’t get terribly offended at the idea of the teachers retaliating. What’s wrong with self-defense?

EVEN IF THAT self-defense includes cluttering my e-mail in-box with all kinds of messages meant to give me the impression of a union ready to go to war.

From the notice letting me know how I can contact the printing company that is preparing all the picket signs that might be needed IF the union actually takes a strike vote, to the news that there is a “confidential e-mail” that says the union members are being wrongly monitored for their union activity.

They even informed us of the informational pickets they did this week, while reminding us that the strike vote has NOT been taken.

“Students come first, but you can’t have a quality school district by putting a fair and equitable labor agreement last,” teachers union President Karen Lewis said, in one of her several prepared statements she issued this week.

“AFTER LABOR DAY, we want to be where we belong, in the classroom,” she said. “However, if talks continue as they have been, we will be where we need to be (and that is) on the (picket) line.”

Now it might be hard to get away with that kind of attitude IF the general public were really buying into the rhetoric that teachers are a batch of overpaid hacks pretending to be performing a worthwhile service.

In short, some people don’t want to have to respect educators, and they want the rest of us to listen to their rhetoric. But the Illinois Education Association has a new poll that would seem to indicate that we’re not buying it.

That poll says 68 percent of all teachers should get the pension benefits they were promised, and 58 percent think that talk of cutting retirement benefits to teachers to try to resolve pension funding programs would be a bad move.

WHEN IT COMES to blame, there are 58 percent who think the pension funding problems are the fault of the General Assembly, while ONLY 5 percent think the teachers are to blame for the situation.

When it comes to the pension situation, I realize that a large part of resolving the problem is determining what will be done to close the funding gap for the program that provides retirement benefits for teachers in the suburbs and rural Illinois.

It is likely that if the school districts have to assume a larger cost of covering those benefits costs, those officials are going to shift blame to teachers.

They’re already going out of their way to claim that any such shift would result in higher property taxes for local homeowners.

IS THIS POLL merely an attempt to pre-empt the eventual argument that, “Your property taxes wouldn’t be so high if those teachers in your school district didn’t expect so much in retirement benefits!”

Which is about as over-the-top a comment as some of the rhetoric we’ve been hearing from Emanuel when it comes to bashing the Chicago Teachers Union.

And my e-mail in-box may well be cluttered in the future with the rhetoric in response.

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