KY CWAers Pulling Out All the Stops in Bluegrass State

IUE-CWA Local 83761 members and activists go into the home stretch fighting for every vote for candidates in races around Kentucky in the Nov. 4 midterm elections.

Whether it is hand-billing, going door-to-door, one-on-one and member-to-member contacts, or walks and working the phone banks, they are energized to keep Democratic control of the Kentucky State House of Representatives as well as trying to elect Alison Lundergan Grimes in place of U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, IUE-CWA Political Program Manager Heather Atkinson said.

A member of IUE-CWA Local 83761 gets started on the night's phone banking in Louisville, Kentucky.

McConnell and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) have co-sponsored a bill to gut the National Labor Relations Act that will render the board useless to help workers. If Republicans control the Senate, McConnell will become the Senate majority leader and Alexander chair of the senate committee that oversees the NLRB.

Local 83761, with more than 4,000 members at the General Electric Appliance Park in Louisville, have been especially motivated for at least two key reasons. Kentucky Republicans have promoted right-to-work legislations and McConnell has compiled a 30-year record of voting for one bad trade deal after another, starting with the North American Free Trade Agreement, and now supporting the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership deal currently under negotiation.

"His record is very clear," Atkinson said. "He stands with corporations rather than workers on this issue."

This week, Kentucky's two leading newspapers, the Louisville Courier Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader, gave full-throated endorsements of Grimes.

"We urge voters to choose the future and elect Alison Lundergan Grimes," the Courier-Journal said.

The Herald-Leader did not mince words in urging voters to pick Grimes over McConnell. In an uncompromising editorial, the newspaper said:

McConnell has sabotaged jobs and transportation bills, even as Kentucky's unemployment exceeds the nation's and an Interstate 75 bridge crumbles over the Ohio River. He blocked tax credits for companies that move jobs back to this country while preserving breaks for those that move jobs overseas. He opposed extending unemployment benefits, while bemoaning the "jobless" recovery. He brags about resolving crises that he helped create.

The Senate may never recover from the bitter paralysis McConnell has inflicted through record filibusters that allow his minority to rule by obstruction.