Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

MIKE TIPPING: Progressive backlash growing over proposed pension cuts

Mike Tipping

The protests in the streets and in the Capitol building in Wisconsin have now continued for almost three weeks.

The Badger State has seen huge gatherings and marches with up to 100,000 participants, four days of school closures in Madison as teachers used personal days to protest, a revealing prank phone call to the governor, a lockdown of the state house and recall proceedings against eight Republican senators.

One of the most interesting scenes in the ongoing drama has been the retreat of state's Democratic senators across state lines to deny a quorum and prevent the bill from being passed. On Thursday, the remaining Republicans ordered the Democrats arrested and authorized the Senate sergeant-at-arms and state law enforcement to use force to bring them back to the Capitol.

All this ruckus isn't over a pressing issue like balancing the state budget. In fact, the unions long ago agreed to all of Walker's proposed salary, benefit and pension cuts. What it's about is ideology.

The sticking point for the protesters is Walker's plan to strip collective bargaining rights from public employee unions, dealing a death blow to groups that have opposed him politically. One might think that this kind of giant, government-crippling political showdown would be something to avoid, but not, apparently, if you're Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who seems to welcome a similar backlash in Maine.

"Quite frankly, once they start reading our budget, they're going to leave Wisconsin and come to Maine because we're going after right-to-work," said LePage in a recent interview with Washington, D.C., newspaper Politico.

This puts LePage at odds with other tea-party backed governors who have taken a different tack. New Jersey's Chris Christie, for instance, recently declared, "I love collective bargaining" at a recent town hall meeting in an attempt to head off this kind of controversy.

In his statement, LePage was referring to legislation he supports that would eliminate a provision called "fair share," by which the state or a unionized business can require workers who don't join their local union to nevertheless pay a share of dues in exchange for the negotiation and advocacy the union does on their behalf.

Without this provision, workers could get the benefits of a representative union without paying anything for it (for a while, anyway, until the union atrophies or collapses).

While this kind of anti-union bill will come before the Legislature later this session, LePage is wrong about it being in his budget. Which is a good thing, because the budget already has made Maine's workers mad enough.

LePage's attempt to give a tax break to the wealthy and cut estate taxes for millionaires, while at the same time cutting pensions for teachers and other public employees has sparked days of rallies in the capital and prompted hundreds of state workers and their supporters to testify against the bill.

It also has begun to show how important those unions are. If budgets already are being balanced on the back of state employees, imagine how much worse things would be without their union representation and ability to join together to push back.

These rallies, along with other events over the past week, have begun to show just how much everyday people are upset with LePage's agenda and the aggressive language and tactics with which he has pursued it.

Last weekend, an event organized by MoveOn.org drew 500 people to the Capitol to stand in solidarity with the marchers in Wisconsin. On Friday, hundreds of women throughout the state posted on Facebook photos of themselves wearing fake beards to protest LePage's flippant facial-hair-related comments about the chemical bisphenol-A.

And things aren't over.

Monday will see another event in Augusta, organized by Maine Can Do Better, to protest the budget, and hundreds have already RSVP'd for an all-day lobby day on Thursday, organized by the Maine People's Alliance (the organization I work for) to push back on a wide range of issues.

The response from the tea party movement, the group that was so vocal in lead-up to the 2010 election, has been muted so far. It staged a counter-protest against MoveOn's Saturday event that attracted only 50 people. Its event in response to the pro-union rally, which was promoted heavily by the governor's office and featured an appearance by LePage, drew only about 75, ten times fewer than their opponents.

It will be interesting to see if this change in enthusiasm levels is just a momentary spike or a more permanent reversal.

If the progressive backlash continues and grows, it could have major implications in the current policy debates and the 2012 election, both in Maine and around the country.

Mike Tipping is a political junkie. He writes the Tipping Point blog on Maine politics at DownEast.com, his own blog at MainePolitics.net and works for the Maine People's Alliance and the Maine People's Resource Center. He's @miketipping on Twitter.