-By Warner Todd Huston
The L.A. Times recently reported that in California unions have already spent $14 million to defeat Republicans in California’s coming elections. This is what any Republican has to face anywhere in the country, though not always at such a high spending rate.
The fact is that when Republicans run for office they face not only the campaign coffers of their Democrat opponent, but they also face the millions of dollars that public employee unions and other far left-wing advocacy groups will spend against them. Rarely do Republicans find much support from high-spending outside forces in anywhere near the same numbers that Democrats command.
While many of Californian’s Democrats have yet to put much of their campaign cash into the race, unions have more than made up for that lack of spending.
“As Seema Mehta reported in Monday’s Times,” The L.A. Times writes, “labor has already spent $14 million on advertising and getting its ground game in place.”
Labor’s campaign in California has been an ambitious mix of trying to persuade swing voters while at the same time trying to mobilize those Democrats who don’t often vote in nonpresidential elections. Much of labor’s strategy to sway swing voters is modeled on the national AFL-CIO’s Working America project, which targets white, blue-collar workers with economically populist messages. The larger piece of the program, though — dictated by California’s demographics — targets African American and, most especially, Latino voters, who will vote Democratic provided they are motivated to vote at all.
With all the outside help that Democrats get it’s a wonder that Republicans can ever get elected.
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.