Back when he ran for governor, I wrote about Tim Kaine and his apparent anti-union bent. People assured me that because he was running in Virginia, he had no choice but to talk a certain way but his heart was really okay when it came to unions.

I just don’t buy that. Just this week the Virgina House rejected his nominee to be Secretary of the Commonwealth (Virginia’s past head of the AFL-CIO Danny LeBlanc) and here’s what Kaine said:

“I am saddened that the House leadership has chosen the Washington
style path of partisanship by rejecting a good and capable man…The Secretary of the Commonwealth has no – I repeat, no – role in
the enforcement of Virginia’s right-to-work law, a law I strongly
support.”

I added the emphasis. I could see a guy making a statement–though I still think it would be a sad comment–that he would enforce the laws of Virginia, which includes right-to-work. But to say publicly he STRONGLY SUPPORTS anti-union laws is unacceptable.

So, where are the letters from Change To Win and the AFL-CIO publicly challenging Kaine? Where are the letters from the Federations that say neither federation will contribute another dollar to his future election campaigns until he disavows that position? Both federations agree that union organizing is the key to survival–yet here you have a Democratic governor declaring that he supports the very law that, in truth, prevents union organizing.

Moreover, where are the letters to Howard Dean, head of the Democratic National Committee, demanding that he state that it is the policy of the Democratic party that it opposes right-to-work laws? I think Kaine has proved why people felt uneasy about him being chosen to deliver the party’s response to Bush’s recent State of the Union.

In some quarters, in the blogosphere, it is in fashion to believe that
as long as Democrats get elected, that’s a good thing–no matter what
they actually believe in. But, I’ve argued here often that, ultimately, that is a failed strategy. What good does it do the labor movement if it supports candidates who will not be 100 percent behind unions on the core issues of organizing? For that matter, what good does it do workers and the public generally if we don’t “get” that what people want is a clear vision that takes on corporate power, not cowers before it in a search for the elusive “center?”