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PATRICK CAUTIONS UNIONS ON ELECTION BACKING
By Jim O’Sullivan
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON D.C., FEB. 21, 2010…...Gov. Deval Patrick warned restive labor unions threatening to pull political support not to ignore his efforts on their behalf, saying they should recall that he had campaigned on “an independence of judgment.”
Facing a three-way campaign in November, Patrick said he did not want organized labor to hold him hostage with threats of defecting from the traditional alliance between the Democratic Party and unions, which voted overwhelmingly for him four years ago but have since grown largely disenchanted with some of his recession-era policies.
“I know that I have to compete for the support and the vote of working people, and I intend to go do so, and point out all the ways in which I go to work every day to try to make their lives better and will continue to do so if given a second term,” Patrick said Sunday. “So I don’t take unions or union votes for granted, but I don’t expect to be taken for granted either, just because I’m a Democrat, that I’m going to line with everything that I’m asked to line up [for] from whatever interest group it is.”
Patrick’s admonition comes as his rivals vie for labor’s affections and as police unions, angered by what they call an erosion of collective bargaining rights, threaten to picket the state Democratic convention in June after protesting outside an AFL-CIO convention in Plymouth earlier this month. Other unions have sounded off with similar frustrations, pointing to trimmed benefits, which Patrick and others call necessary to prop up the state’s ailing budget, as a retreat from what Patrick had promised.
Asked about Patrick’s comments, state AFL-CIO president Robert Haynes said, “We never asked him to line up. We asked him to listen to us and to let us have a voice in the administration. I guess he would say that he let us do that. I guess he would say that. But the results are terrible as it relates to reform.”
“We’re very interested in reform and making reform work, but not when it comes at the expense of collective bargaining,” Haynes said, adding that frustration with Patrick has built among police, firefighters, teachers and other government employees “across the breadth of the labor movement.”
“We wanted a Democratic governor. We voted for him. We actually believed the rhetoric ‘together we can’,” Haynes said, referring to Patrick’s campaign slogan.”We have a lot more experience in state government than he does. We’ve been around here a long time.”
“He has issues with organized labor,” Haynes said. In a telephone interview, he said picketing the convention would be “foolhardy.”
During an interview in a hotel restaurant where Patrick is attending the National Governors Association winter meeting, Patrick reasserted his reluctance to accept slot machines at the state’s racetracks, a key component of the gambling package preferred by House Speaker Robert DeLeo, but again stopped shy of threatening a slots veto.
“My concern about slots is that we get the human impact without the jobs, and we need the jobs,” Patrick told the News Service. “I think, to the extent we talk about slots as a bridge to destination resort casinos, I think that there’s a real chance we won’t get those destination resort casinos, that we’ll stop with the slots. So I’m not persuaded that slots are in our job-creating interest.”
“I’ve been very clear that I think there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this. I think the right way to do it is with a limited number of destination resort casinos. The wrong way to do it is with racinos, or slot parlors,” Patrick said.
The anti-slots stance is another needle for some unions hoping to retain jobs at the state’s four racetracks. Patrick’s testy dance with labor comes during a delicate political time for him, taking heat from a pair of well-funded candidates on the right that he has not cut spending deeply enough, and from core Democratic constituencies that say he has hacked too deeply, or in the wrong places.
Unenrolled Treasurer Timothy Cahill has courted labor, telling them he did not want to “demonize” public employees, a clear effort at contrasting with Patrick. Two candidates on Patrick’s left, primary rival and former Green-Rainbow candidate Grace Ross, and the current Green-Rainbow standard-bearer, Jill Stein, have appealed to unions.
Perhaps most ominously for Patrick, more union members backed Republican Sen. Scott Brown last month than went for Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley, according to an AFL-CIO poll, signaling a willingness among the rank-and-file to stray from traditional party affiliations.
Earlier Sunday, Patrick appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” in defense of President Barack Obama, a friend and political ally. Patrick told the News Service that he recognized how Obama had run into resistance.
“I think what the president is doing, and what feels very familiar, is he’s asking for big changes, and some of those changes involve traditional Democratic constituencies, and some of those changes involve traditional opposition, but he is doing it in the spirit of what is best for the nation as a whole,” Patrick said.
Patrick has run up against unions on a number of fronts, most recently the police over a higher education pay incentive program, a shift toward civilian traffic conductors at construction sites, and curbed collective bargaining agreements. He also encountered pushback from teacher unions over an education bill that passed last month.
“You have to acknowledge that for those police officers who are not getting details on state construction sites, it’s money for them,” Patrick said. “You have to acknowledge that. And at a time when everybody’s short, that’s real life, and I acknowledge that. But I think in this job you have to think about what is best for all of us. It’s just not an argument that you can sustain that 49 other states seem to be able to have less expensive flaggers at state construction sites and we have to have police details.”
He went on, “The irony I was going to point out is that I’m hearing the objections to details and what a betrayal it is from some of the same police officers who have their jobs because I directed Recovery Act money to local communities to keep them on the payroll. So that’s just the nature of the times, right?”
Patrick and his wife, Diane, are attended in Washington by operations chief Ken Brown from his Boston office, deputy federal relations director Jewel James and federal policy analyst Gabe Maser from his Washington office, David O’Brien, a longtime political aide who is now executive director of the group organizing July’s NGA convention in Boston, and longtime advance staffer Rose Arruda, now on leave from the administration and working with O'Brien.
Patrick’s Washington office has come under heavy scrutiny since the start of his term, after he restructured its funding stream. Republicans have attacked the $403,000 line item as wasteful, while Patrick and lawmakers have defended the branch as a necessary entrée to federal deliberations. With revenues in decline, the Legislature last year zeroed out the office’s line item, a cut Patrick circumvented by shifting funding within his executive account.
The office sits on the second floor of the Hall of States, an office building a few blocks from the capitol managed by the State Services Organization, a collaboration among the Council of State Governments, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Governors Association. More than 30 other states keep branch offices there, Patrick aides said. Aged promotional depictions of Massachusetts hang on the walls along with, prominently, page one of the Boston Globe the morning after Patrick’s inauguration, featuring Patrick delivering his inaugural address from the State House steps.
James, running the office while director Caroline Powers is out on maternity leave, said the Beltway contingent’s purpose was to hunt for federal funding, monitor policy that might harm the Commonwealth, and serve as a liaison with the Obama Administration. James coordinates a weekly conference call with congressional aides about funds flowing from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the $787 billion federal stimulus law.
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