Dear Colleagues,
It is hard to know how to measure success in the aftermath of the elections the other day. The most important thing may be about which candidates won or lost, who has control of which branches of government, or how we fared on ballot issues. One area that I am mindful of is how much participation we had in the process and what this means as times become more uncertain for our profession.
With over 600 strong we could have made more of an impact if everyone had worked on the election for 1 or 2 hours. Instead we had some strong folks work countless hours. Bravo to you, the workers who made a difference in the election – thank you. Our level of activity in the SB5 fight was better than in this election, but even in that battle there were still far too many people who held out for others to do the work. What do we have to do to mobilize everyone?
Obviously we are relieved that the Obama/Biden team got re-elected, although more needs to be done to change the administration’s education policies that have been lifted from the corporate “reformers.” Retaining Sherrod Brown is good for Ohio as well as the US Senate. So, in the national arena we did pretty well.
In Ohio, things are not so good. Issue 2, the redistricting initiative, lost in a big way. People did not understand it. The campaign was not funded well enough to do a good job and the issue was not sexy enough to rally a lot of people. How we pay for the problem that issue 2 was trying to rectify can be seen if you look at the results for the Ohio legislature – how can Obama carry Ohio when 58 of 99 house seats are electing Republicans? That is what the current system of partisan gerrymandering encourages – a distortion of the true will of the people.
Speaking of the Ohio House, Republicans won 58 to 39 Democrat seats. Our own Tom Schmida lost his bid to represent District 37 after a hard-fought battle in a predominantly Republican district. Two seats are still up for grabs as provisional ballots and recounts will occur. If the Republicans prevail in those two districts they will have the 60-39 super majority they need to avoid a citizen veto. If they had held this majority last year we would have been unable to get SB5 on the ballot to repeal the law. Ohio could easily become a Right to Work state. We could also see a longer school year, limits on subjects of bargaining, mandatory performance and/or merit pay, elimination of tenure, and a host of other legislation with no way to stop it. Pay close attention to these two contested elections. All we need is to gain one of them and we can breathe a sigh of relief. If not, then hold on for a ride that will not be pleasant.
So, what will it take to get you involved in the next battle? We are much stronger when we fight side by side than when we wait for someone else to do the heavy lifting.
In Union,
Ari Klein
CHTU President