5 Gathering Forces

With Ohio in turmoil over the passage of the union-busting legislation through the Senate, our AAUP team redoubled our efforts to try to turn the bill back in the state House—hoping vainly that now that legislators could see the resistance across the state wiser heads would prevail.

At this point in the struggle, a column appeared in The New York Times that began a process of putting into focus this sweeping attack on the labor movement and would provide great clarity to us about the motivations of our opponents.¹

Dr. William Cronon, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, wrote the column that appeared as an op-ed on March 21, 2011. Cronon is an important figure in the historical profession, the author of several important historical works, including Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, about the growth of Chicago. In addition, he was then president-elect of the American Historical Association, the nation’s largest organization of historians, a position that commands an enormous amount of respect in the profession.

So when Professor Cronon wrote a piece critical of the Wisconsin union-busting debacle, it was bound to get attention. In his heartfelt essay, one could see that Cronon cared deeply about the tragic way that Gov. Scott Walker and his extremist allies were tearing apart the state of Wisconsin while destroying the state’s own traditions. “Republicans in Wisconsin,” Cronon wrote, “are seeking to reverse civic traditions that for more than a century have been among the most celebrated achievements not just of their state, but of their own party as well.”

Cronon went on to point out that Theodore Roosevelt had called Wisconsin the “laboratory of democracy.” It was the first state to introduce worker’s compensation (1911), unemployment insurance (1932), and public employee bargaining (1959). Professors at Wisconsin had helped design Social Security and were responsible for founding the union that eventually became the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). These accomplishments were possible because of collaboration between Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin.

“The demonizing of government at all levels,” Cronon wrote, “that has become such a reflexive impulse for conservatives in the early 21st century would have mystified most elected officials in Wisconsin just a few decades ago.” Cronon went on to point out that Walker’s policies also broke with the state’s tradition because of the lack of transparency. Even open-meetings laws were apparently violated in the rush to crush the unions. The Wisconsin way had been to work jointly for the common good, but these Republicans had adopted an “ends justify the means” attitude, an exercise of “power in abusively nontransparent ways that represent such a radical break from the state’s tradition of open government.”

The Republicans were creating harsh divisions in the state that had not existed since the Vietnam War, and Cronon said that he found himself asking the question of Wisconsin political leaders that was once posed to another Badger Stater, Sen. Joseph McCarthy: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Cronon concluded:

The turmoil in Wisconsin is not only about bargaining rights or the pension payments of public employees. It is about transparency and openness. It is about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect. Joe McCarthy forgot these lessons of good government, and so, I fear, has Mr. Walker. Wisconsin’s citizens have not.

Cronon’s column created an instant sensation and, perhaps more importantly, drew me and many others to his blog. It was really by reading his blog that eyes began to be opened about the sweeping nature of the attack on the middle class. The blog, Scholar as Citizen, contained a detailed entry entitled, “Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere? (Hint: It Didn’t Start Here).”²

In what he aptly described as a “study guide,” Cronon explained that it had occurred to him that the huge amount of radical legislation sweeping the country could not be just the product of a couple of wealthy conservative activists, like the Koch brothers. Pointing out that many such organizations had gotten their start in the wake of Barry Goldwater’s defeat, he said that some of them were very obvious, like the Heritage Foundation, but others were largely invisible. “That’s why events like the ones we’ve just experienced in Wisconsin,” Cronon wrote, “can seem to come out of nowhere. Few outside the conservative movement have been paying much attention, and that is ill-advised.”

Cronon provided readers with a couple of good sources to investigate the secret right-wing organizations on their own (such as SourceWatch and Right Wing Watch), but he added that, as far as he could tell, the most important organization was the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). In a section titled, “Telling Your State Legislators What To Do,” Cronon focused closely on ALEC. He explained that because the organization’s information is open only to members, it is not easy to see exactly what ALEC is doing or proposing. And despite Wisconsin having one of the strictest open-meetings laws in the country, the legislature carved out a special exception so that they could meet in secret with ALEC.

There has been substantial reporting on ALEC, and Cronon cites a good deal of that on his blog. Essentially, as Cronon points out, ALEC partners with corporations and the wealthy to craft legislation that will bend state laws in their favor. The “model” bills are then brought back to their home states by ALEC legislators and introduced, sometimes with little or no change, in their state legislatures.

Before we move on to ALEC’s involvement in Ohio, it is necessary to discuss what befell Cronon because of his willingness to speak the truth about this right-wing organization. In an intimidation tactic, the Wisconsin Republican Party immediately issued an Open Records Law request to see all of Professor Cronon’s email. Such a hostile act was an obvious attempt to silence an important critic. Wasting no time, on March 28, 2011, the AAUP national office sent a strongly worded statement to Biddy Martin, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, urging her not to comply with the Republican demand. Terming it “an outrageous request,” the AAUP agreed with Cronon’s own initial response that this was “an assault on academic freedom.” Eventually, the university, exercising its discretion, released only those emails that did not compromise the personal privacy of students or other respondents. It found no incidents of Cronon using his email for partisan political activity.³

In an eloquent defense of the faculty, Dr. Martin wrote to the members of the UW community: “To our faculty, I say: Continue to ask difficult questions, explore unpopular lines of thought and exercise your academic freedom, regardless of your point of view. As always, we will take our cue from the bronze plaque on the walls of Bascom Hall. It calls for the ‘continual and fearless sifting and winnowing’ of ideas. It is our tradition, our defining value, and the way to a better society.”⁴

Cronon’s experience at the hands of the Wisconsin Republicans and his lifting the corner of the tent on the sordid attacks that were being launched against faculty and other union members was an important moment. We saw clearly that we were not simply facing some old-school Republicans fighting old battles; rather, this was a new and destructive political movement, something that threatened not only university values of academic freedom and shared governance but ultimately, as we shall see, the democratic process itself.⁵

Discovering ALEC as the creative force behind Senate Bill 5 also solved another puzzling issue for us. Shannon Jones, the only sponsor of the bill, was continually and completely unable to answer any questions about the legislation. Time and again, when asked about some complex issue regarding the destructive impact of the bill, she would respond with her two or three talking points. These one-liners concluded so often with the catch words “flexibility” or “skin in the game” that we joked we should have a drinking game during her testimony: take a drink every time she said “skin in the game.” Even a hardy drinker would be under the table in no time.

Since Jones knew so little about the issues herself (except having a disdain for unions), where had the bill originated? ALEC gave us the answer. Although the Ohio legislation was more radical than what appeared in Wisconsin, it was quite similar, and we had begun to believe they had some shared source. That source, as it turned out, was ALEC. But cutting through the secrecy was a challenge.

It took a while for the full realization to unfold, and by the time it did, we were deeply engaged in the fight to repeal Senate Bill 5 as well as battling other extremist legislation generated by ALEC and strongly supported by Republican legislators. Just as we were beginning to understand the assault that was underway, we discovered that ALEC was planning a national conference in downtown Cincinnati in the historic Hilton Netherland Plaza Hotel. To us, in the wake of Senate Bill 5 and as we began to understand the organization’s responsibility for the bill, it looked like they intended to do a victory dance. Student activists and others who cared about Ohio took the lead in making ALEC understand that they might be meeting in Cincinnati, but they were not welcome.

An important part of the coalition was a joining together of students from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, some 20 miles north of the city, and students from the University of Cincinnati. Other community groups were important, too, but this synergy between students at UC and Miami—both state universities—as well as Ohio State and other colleges and universities, would play an important role in coming months.

The organizers planned a protest that would garner assistance from students nationwide. Today, when ALEC meets, they can expect protestors. But it all started in Cincinnati. The students had only weeks to create this important action, and they did a superb job. I often thought, as I saw them at work, how surprised the right-wing politicians and corporate titans who considered them irrelevant would be at their creativity, their ingenuity, and their courage. It was a good thing that they were on our side.

The staging area for the protest was the downtown landmark Fountain Square, across the street from the Netherlands Hotel. A special feature of the protest was some creative street theater featuring a 15-foot-tall puppet that represented ALEC, ravaging the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people. The crowd cheered as the protestors fought back against their exploitation based on the history of the organization since its founding in the 1970s. Eventually, after speakers outlined the threat to Ohio that ALEC represented, the group marched around the hotel, beating drums and calling for more transparency. It was a powerful sight as the line of people stretched from corner to corner around the block. Large numbers of spectators, including a lot of office workers, gathered to watch the spectacle. During the day, some of the protestors ventured into the hotel to try to engage the ALEC participants in debate. They were somewhat successful in their quest and had civil contacts with participants, who seemed surprised that anyone knew about their meeting. Hotel security, however, siding with ALEC since they were paying the bills, were careful about ejecting anyone who was not a conference attendee.

Later in the day, activists held a well-attended teach-in at a former school in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, about ALEC and its activities as well as other corporate attempts to undermine democratic processes in Ohio and across the country. They also sent a letter to Ron Scheberle, the executive director of ALEC and former lead lobbyist for Verizon, with a list of requests. The powerful letter, signed by the “ALEC Protest Team, Cincinnati, OH,” cited Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, pointing out that the dead on that Civil War battlefield had not died in vain but to make certain that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

ALEC, the Protest Team argued, threatens that promise: “We write to you today because we believe that your organization’s actions dishonor those dead and place in peril the system of government they died to defend. The least that you owe them is the decency to acknowledge your actions so that a democratic discussion may be had on the policies that you have pushed.” The Protest Team then made a series of requests. First, they wanted disclosure of the list of ALEC donors. Second, they wanted the names of elected officials who were members of ALEC. Third, ALEC should give them the full texts of their model bills. Fourth, when legislators submit bills based on ALEC models, they should honestly say so. The letter concluded that the team did not expect to be able to agree on issues with ALEC but did hope “that we can bring you to accept a code of conduct for your organization that accords with our democratic system of government.” Not surprisingly, ALEC’s Scheberle did not respond to the Protest Team.⁶ The next episode in the pursuit of ALEC, and the organization’s responsibility for Senate Bill 5 and other antidemocratic pieces of legislation, was told in detail in the Cincinnati alternative newsweekly City Beat, in August. Aliya Rahman, a doctoral student at Miami and a labor activist, had, like many of us, been alerted to ALEC by Cronon’s work and had done some research herself. She was one of the lead organizers of the Cincinnati protest. A couple of hours after the protest and teach-ins, Rahman was at her apartment in Over-the-Rhine, exhausted and evaluating the effort, when she got a phone call. “I have information on ALEC,” the caller told her. As City Beat reported:

“What kind of information do you have?” Rahman asked the caller, expecting little after weeks of phone calls from activists whose enthusiasm sometimes veered into conspiracy theory.

This one left her trembling.

A whistleblower with full access to ALEC’s documents wanted to deliver 800 model bills to the protest’s organizers. So Rahman . . . agreed to act as conduit.

She passed the documents along to the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit investigative newsgroup, which organized them onto a website that it activated July 13. Overtly critical, alecexposed.org allows anyone to cross-check wording from the leaked bills against laws in their own states to see where ALEC’s invisible hand might appear.⁷

In May 2011, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) had produced a riveting report entitled “Quid pro Status Quo: ALEC and State-Sanctioned Corruption in Ohio.” The report detailed the close relationships between the Ohio legislature, under Republican control, and ALEC, particularly through the State Rep. John Adams (R-Sidney). Adams was ALEC’s Ohio public sector chair. He worked particularly closely with the private sector chair, Time Warner Cable’s Ed Kozelek, regional vice president for government relations. They had both worked diligently in 2011 to prepare for ALEC’s spring conference in Cincinnati. By the end of February 2011, CMD reported, they had received pledges for more than $107,000 from more than 50 corporations and lobby firms for ALEC’s Ohio operations. These monies were held in the Ohio ALEC “scholarship fund.”⁸

A series of emails that CMD obtained through public records requests show that Faith Williams, a lobbyist with the law firm Bricker and Eckler, LLP, had a discussion with Adams on the morning of March 23, 2011, about “an economic development study” created by some of her clients in the life insurance industry. CMD reports that they discussed a proposed amendment of the state’s 2011 budget and possible support for ALEC’s scholarship fund. The amendment would be “a 12-page portion of the more than 80-page piece of ‘model legislation’ known as the ‘Insurer Receivership Model Act.’” In short, this would allow insurance companies to lump their assets, losses, and obligations into one tradable commodity. Not only did House Speaker William Batchelder agree to slip this into the budget bill (thus allowing it to avoid further scrutiny), but later emails demonstrate that contacts for Cincinnati insurance companies were provided by Williams to Adams’s office at Adams’s request. American Financial Group, along with Western & Southern, were added to the roster of potential donor corporations.⁹

The story of a baseball game can provide evidence to the insidious influence of ALEC in the Ohio legislature. No trip to Cincinnati would be complete without a Reds game, so Time Warner stepped up to sponsor the event. At least 40 tickets were given to at least 22 lawmakers and others, ranging from legislative aides to lobbyists. A large ALEC contingent saw the Reds lose to the Florida Marlins, 7–6, with food and drinks provided.¹⁰

The complication that the CMD uncovered was that Ohio law prohibits lawmakers from accepting gifts valued at more than $75 from a lobbyist. CMD pressed the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee (JLEC) and the Office of the Ohio Legislative Inspector General (OLIG) to investigate this apparent violation. Tony Bledsoe, OLIG executive director, eventually responded by splitting legal hairs: Time Warner’s Kozelek may well have been a lobbyist, but ALEC was a group to which the Ohio legislature pays membership fees. Thus, in a convoluted interpretation, Bledsoe concluded that the legislators who received the boodle had no need to report it. The interpretation, as CMD suggests, may just boil down to who controls OLIG, which is, of course, the 12-member Joint Legislative Ethics Committee. Eight members are required to vote to remove the legislative inspector general. Not surprisingly, five of the 12 were ALEC members—including JLEC Chair Sen. Tom Niehaus and Vice Chair Speaker William Batchelder—and three of them (Sen. Niehaus, Sen. Keith Farber, and Rep. Matt Huffman) received tickets to the game.¹¹

On July 12, 2011, The Nation newsmagazine, in collaboration with CMD, led with a series of powerful articles about the impact of ALEC on public schools, health care, prison labor, and rigged elections. An essay by veteran reporter John Nichols introduced the package, citing the importance of Rahman’s coup. Other stories, written by the journal’s excellent reporters, outlined the involvement of billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch and the overwhelming emphasis on gaining partisan political advantages for corporations.

Joel Rogers and Laura Dresser wrote in The Nation about ALEC’s ruthless attack on unions. ALEC’s view of government is that, outside of providing security in which corporations can operate, it should be “demonized, starved, or privatized. Any force in civil society, especially labor, that contests the right of business to grab all social surplus for itself, and to treat people like road kill and the earth like a sewer, should be crushed.” Not knowing what lay in the future, Rogers and Dresser speculated that perhaps a mass movement to defend the rights of workers and the middle class might develop to successfully oppose ALEC and its supporters. But “we can be sure that ALEC will fight them fiercely in the states, while pressing forward with its own project: the complete business domination of American public life.” Certainly harsh language but our experience in Ohio in 2011 provided evidence for such a view.¹²

Perhaps the most definitive report on ALEC’s involvement in Ohio was not published until February 6, 2012. “ALEC in Ohio: The Corporate Special Interests That Help Write Ohio’s Laws” was co-authored by a coalition of progressive groups, including CMD, Common Cause, People for the American Way, and Progress Ohio. The ALEC in Ohio (AIO) report spelled out the cold reality of ALEC’s capture of the Ohio legislature in 2011. I am going to quote liberally from the report, which is available at the websites of the above organizations and on other sites concerned with defending democratic processes.¹³

“ALEC’s internal talking points,” AIO reports, “praise Gov. John Kasich as someone who ‘helped mold ALEC in its formative years.’” Kasich served as legislative aide to ALEC’s longest-serving national chairman, former Ohio State Sen. Donald “Buz” Lukens. Kasich, AIO notes, has tried to distance himself from the organization in recent years, and his office reports that he is not an “active” member, since he is not a legislator. But the reality is that Kasich has “put forward major proposals that share titles, messaging strategies, and policy elements with ALEC model legislation.”

And, of course, Rep. John Adams (named 2010 ALEC State Legislator of the Year) is famous for working closely with ALEC. Adams credits the group with influencing his legislative proposals, such as a $12 billion plan to eliminate Ohio’s income tax. In fact, between January and October of 2011, “33 bills were introduced in the Ohio legislature that are identical or contain elements from 64 different ALEC ‘model’ proposals.” Nationally, about a thousand bills based to some extent on ALEC models are introduced each year. And each year about 17 percent become law.

The AIO study reported that in the past ten years, employees of the 22 corporations on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Board have spent more than $9.3 million on political campaigns in Ohio. This does not include the many other ALEC member corporations that underwrite ALEC’s operations but do not have a seat on the corporate board. The report specifically points to Time Warner’s Ed Kozelek as a power broker in the Ohio state organization, creating links between ALEC and state legislators.

Legislators pay $50 a year to join ALEC—a tiny proportion of the vast sums that ALEC expends. About 98 percent of the group’s revenues come from nonmembership sources. Wealthy business magnates and huge corporations provide the rest of the funding as a way to produce legislative results. The Koch brothers, for example, have contributed more than $1.4 million to ALEC since 1998. Wealthy foundations have also contributed loads of cash, including the Scaife family’s Allegheny Foundation and the Coors family’s Castle Rock Foundation.

ALEC’s “scholarship” fund is a way to funnel corporate money to legislators. The scholarships are used to fund travel and expenses to ALEC events. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, the coalition of progressive groups received a ledger sheet about ALEC’s financial transactions. On the credit side for corporation donations, several of the names were not surprising. They included Procter and Gamble, Duke Energy, the National Rifle Association, Ohio Farmers Insurance, AT&T, Diageo North America (a major liquor distributor), Abbot Laboratories, Key Bank, Purdue Pharma, Cable Telecommunications Association, and the American Petroleum Institute.

On the debit side of the ledger were 20 Ohio legislators, including Speaker Batchelder, Rep. Louis Blessing, and Rep. John Adams. The legislators received an average of $1,900 from the “scholarships.” Though this is a small number for the giant corporations involved, the AIO report notes that this money “goes a long way in providing ALEC legislators with the perk of trips to luxury resorts to be wined and dined alongside corporate lobbyists and prospective donors.” ALEC provides funds in other ways, too, such as child care so that legislators can bring their whole family. In fact, in 2009, ALEC spent $250,000 on child care expenses. As of January 2012, 57 members, or roughly 43 percent, of the Ohio legislature were members of ALEC, and all but one were Republicans. Several Ohio legislators serve on ALEC task forces.

The bulk of the AIO study, however, details the parallel language that links ALEC “model” bills with bills that were introduced into the Ohio legislature. It clearly demonstrates that many bills introduced during 2011, including Senate Bill 5, were clones of ALEC bills. Going back to an earlier point, this explains why Sen. Jones was unable to answer questions about her union-busting bill. ALEC in fact, has a sweeping collection of anti union laws readily available, according to the AIO analysis. They include the Right to Work Act, which eliminates employee obligation to pay the costs of collective bargaining; the Public Employee Freedom Act, which bars almost any action to create a union; the Public Employer Payroll Deduction Act, which bars automatic dues collection; and the Voluntary Contribution Act, which bars the use of dues for political activity.¹⁴

In the face of this legislative assault and evidence that ALEC had stacked the deck against working people and the middle class, the labor movement in Ohio began to do what it does best: organize. As already mentioned, meetings had begun early in earnest, such as the one my executive director and I attended in Columbus, in order to mount resistance to these radical destructive forces that were moving against professional and working people in Ohio.

As early as the end of February, it had become clear that compromise with the Republicans pushing Senate Bill 5 was unlikely. In the face of unprecedented protests, Senate President Niehaus insisted, “There will be a bill.” Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern countered that if Kasich and the Republicans insisted on pushing the bill through the legislature, there would be a ballot challenge. “The people of the state will gather together and we’ll put this on the ballot. We will repeal it and that will happen,” Redfern predicted.¹⁵

Throughout March 2011, as the Republicans were pushing Senate Bill 5 through the legislature, union members and community leaders were talking about creating a coalition to fight Senate Bill 5 by putting the legislation up to a vote of the people. The public announcement of the new organization came the day after Kasich had—quickly and with great fanfare—signed Senate Bill 5 into law. The news came at a rally in Columbus at the IBEW hall.¹⁶

“We will deal a setback to the wealthy elitists who’ve taken over our state,” Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga told the crowd, according to the Columbus Free Press. “We’ve been given a tremendous opportunity to educate the public on the fact that unions created the middle class, public education and the eight-hour day, child labor laws and a decent living standard for working people. It will be a tough, difficult fight.” But Burga insisted, “It’s a fight that, with our friends and allies, we will win!”¹⁷

We Are Ohio was thus born, a historic coalition between labor, community, religious, and political groups that would fight this important battle for the middle class. Initially, labor leaders were meeting as part of the “Unity Table” or “Labor Table,” which is an affiliate of the National Unity Table in Washington DC, as Sara Kilpatrick, AAUP State Conference executive director, remembered. “Once it became clear that SB 5 was a serious threat, labor unions outside of the Unity Table were welcomed to participate,” Kilpatrick said. She added that once it became clear that SB 5 was going to pass, the Unity Table decided that it would not offer any amendments but would instead pursue the referendum route. “At that point,” Kilpatrick recalls, “we knew we were heading into a full-fledged campaign. We quickly hired A. J. Stokes as campaign director, and the Executive Committee decided upon the name We Are Ohio, mostly because the Wisconsin effort was called We Are Wisconsin.”¹⁸

The initial structure of We Are Ohio was based on the ability of the various labor organizations to commit resources, manpower, and money. The top decision-making tier, called the Executive Committee, included the Ohio Education Association (OEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Ohio Federation of Teachers (OFT), United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Communication Workers of America (CWA), American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

On the next level was the Steering Committee. This consisted of all of the groups on the Executive Committee, plus the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors (OCAAUP), the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), the Ohio Nurses Association (ONA), the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the United Steelworkers (USW).

This somewhat clinical explanation of how the organization was structured does not do justice to the many other community and religious groups that worked side by side with the labor movement to turn back Senate Bill 5. Among the nonunion organizations that contributed to our efforts were Black ministers’ groups, the Catholic Church’s Amos Project, the Cincinnati Interfaith Labor Council, the Farmer’s Union, the Blue-Green Alliance of the Sierra Club, and many student organizations.

So, by early April, the battle was joined. A ruthless union-busting bill had been railroaded through the legislature by a group of ideologically driven extremists. In response, an historic coalition of progressive organizations would try to defend rights that one would have thought had been settled long ago—after the Triangle Fire, at Ludlow, or along Anaconda Road.¹⁹