Republicans losing the PR war

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A popular political saying in this part of the country is: "As Ohio goes, so goes the nation." And for good reason – as a national political bellwether, this is as reliable a state as any. So, with the 2012 presidential and congressional elections just around the corner, my latest Ohio polling shows that Republicans, while well-intentioned in their efforts to balance the state budget, are losing the public-relations battle and may end up losing much more.

What is happening here may be instructive to national leaders of both major parties as they prepare for the political fights coming next year.

In Columbus, a Republican-dominated legislature this spring delivered to Republican Gov. John Kasich a bill that limits public-sector union collective-bargaining liberties in an effort to close an $8 billion state budget shortfall. The Ohio legislation closely mirrored the effort earlier this year in Wisconsin, though Ohio's bill is actually more extensive in its rollback of public-sector union negotiating powers.

Kasich apparently assumed that he and the Republicans in the General Assembly had weathered a ferocious storm of union protests that, like in Wisconsin, lasted several weeks, spilling from statehouse lawns into legislative committee hearing rooms, but that were ultimately ineffective in derailing the reform bill.

After the Ohio legislation, known as Senate Bill 5, was signed by Kasich, he almost immediately turned his attention to other matters related to a larger, broad-based reform of state government. Meanwhile, those same union activists who protested at the statehouse before Senate Bill 5 was passed have kept the issue alive by launching an initiative petition drive to repeal it. They have organized almost daily events in many of the local television markets around the state to gather sympathetic news coverage from a mostly passive press corps.

My polling shows the repeal effort is meeting a favorable audience.

We asked if respondents favored SB 5 or opposed it, and the result was decidedly mixed – with 45 percent saying they supported it and 49 percent saying they opposed it. However, when asked whether they support the repeal of SB 5 or if they would instead prefer to keep it on the books, a significant vein of discontent over the union-limiting measure surfaced. It found that 51 percent favored reversal of the measure, while just 38 percent favored keeping the new law in place. (The balance of respondents were unsure on the question.)

My polling also suggests that Democrats and the unions have found an effective message and are using it effectively. They have morphed this issue from a sensible solution to solve a state budget crisis into an underhanded effort by Republicans to attack the "civil rights" of unionized state workers. How a public employee's civil rights are tied to their ability to negotiate long vacations, full health benefits with no co-pays, generous sick-pay arrangements and fully paid retirement plans is a question no one – especially Kasich – is asking, to his political detriment.

And I suspect that partly for that reason, my recent polling of Ohio's likely voters shows that Kasich and Senate Bill 5 are both unpopular.

Kasich's job approval rating is dismal, as just 37 percent give him positive marks for his work. Another 56 percent gave him negative marks. But what is remarkable is that the percentage of likely voters who gave him "poor" marks (the most negative response available) is, at 42 percent, twice as high as the percentage who said he is doing an "excellent" job (the most positive response available).

What is more is there is evidence in our polling that the reason the public has turned against Kasich is his signing of SB 5 – among those who give him a "poor" job rating, 92 percent favor repeal of SB 5.

It's not like Kasich doesn't have a positive story to tell. The argument in favor of SB 5 is a compelling one. The new law would liberate state and local governments from all manner of restrictions that are currently helping unions win very generous contracts in the negotiating process. It would cumulatively save Ohio's local governments alone hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits costs.

But if this political tactic of turning collective bargaining from a means of contract negotiation into a civil-rights issue for government workers succeeds here in Ohio, look for it to spread nationwide in this election cycle, painting a gloomy budgetary prospect that as Ohio appears now to be going, so soon may go the nation – again.

Fritz Wenzel is president of polling firm Wenzel Strategies.