Watching the recent fireworks in the Minnesota gubernatorial race, where presumptive Republican nominee Tom Emmer is under increasing fire for supporting a lower minimum wage for restaurant workers, I can’t help but be reminded of Washington state’s 2008 gubernatorial contest, in which a similar statement by Republican nominee Dino Rossi arguably proved to be the turning point in a race that had appeared to be tilting in his favor.
By the end of September 2008, in the midst of the short-lived Palin bounce, polls showed challenger Rossi closing the gap on incumbent Democratic Governor Chris Gregoire, and perhaps even taking a small lead. Republicans were ebullient and Democrats more than a little nervous as the rematch of our bitter, statistically-tied 2004 contest headed into the homestretch.
And then everything changed.
As evident in his current senate campaign, Rossi rarely makes the mistake of clearly addressing issues on which he is out of step with voters, but during a candidate debate near Blaine WA, and perhaps flush with overconfidence from recent events, Rossi finally tripped up. As first reported by Josh Feit in his pre-PubliCola, exclusive election coverage here on HA, the candidates were asked if the minimum wage was supposed to be a “living wage,” and whether either candidate would consider scaling it back.
“I don’t know of anybody getting rich on the minimum wage,” Gregoire told the hostile crowd (the debate was sponsored by the Association of Washington Business and the questions came from their membership). “The people of Washington are struggling. They go to the gas pumps and can’t afford to fill up the car, they go to the grocery and can’t afford to put food on the table…Washingtonians need to be able to provide for their families. Plenty of people are working minimum wage jobs that need to provide for their families, and I want to stand with Washingtonians.”
She said she supported the voter-approved minimum wage, $8.07 an hour. She also said she supported training programs for teen workers.
Rossi took the opposite point of view. Touting his Washington Restaurant Association endorsement (the most adamant opponents of the minimum wage), he said: “The minimum wage was not meant to be a family wage. It’s meant to be an entry level wage.”
Josh went on to write about a conversation he’d had that night with a Blaine convenience store clerk who had just sold Rossi a can of beans, some Certs and a Red Bull. “I’m a Republican. I like the Palin thing,” the clerk told Josh, explaining why he planned to vote for Rossi. But when Josh recounted the candidates’ exchange over the minimum wage, the suddenly not-so-star-struck clerk got pissed off:
“If he lowers it,” he said, “I don’t want to vote for him. I’d be cutting my head off. I don’t want to demote myself.”
Suddenly, WA’s highest in the nation minimum wage became one of the hottest issues in the campaign, and within days, the governor had cut a new ad bashing Rossi with it.
It didn’t take a convenience store clerk or a focus group to tell you that this was a bad issue for Rossi. Washington’s minimum wage was tied to inflation via a citizens initiative that passed by a two to one margin only a decade earlier, a policy that remains widely popular with nearly everybody except, well, restaurant owners and other low-wage employers. But rather than attempting damage control, Rossi’s people only stepped in it deeper.
When the state Dems sent an operative to stand outside a Rossi rally in Ellensberg, holding a sign criticizing Rossi’s support for slashing the minimum wage, Rossi’s top economic adviser, Kittitas County Republican chair Matt Manweller (known here on HA as “the Nutty Professor”), simply went ballistic. Prof. Manweller vehemently defended Rossi’s position while angrily attacking the young protester and the 300,000 minimum wage workers he claimed to represent.
“You and those 300,000 people are dumber than a post,” Manweller yelled. Go ahead, watch it. It’s kinda stunning.
The minimum wage remained a focal point throughout the remainder of the campaign as Gregoire gradually pulled into a commanding lead. When the ballots were tallied, Gregoire had won by a comfortable 195,000-vote margin (6.5%), compared to her disputed 133-vote victory in 2004.
No doubt there were other factors that led to Gregoire’s victory, but the minimum wage provided an invaluable toehold at a time when she was quickly losing ground, and proved a potent message for differentiating the two candidates on economic issues at a time of great economic uncertainty.
And it provides a lesson you’d think that Emmer and his fellow Minnesota Republicans might want to learn.
Goldy, you need to refresh your memory. Rossi was only ahead in 4 polls throughout the election and one of those polls, which put him up by 6 was clearly botched. The close race was manufactured news.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....html#polls
HA! RCP has Murray’s race as a toss up. Toss up my ass, it’s going to be Murray by 12%.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....e_map.html
…and Didier’s undoing will clearly be his socialist/Frenchy/un-American surname.
“Diedyeeer!!!’ What the hell kinda name is that???”
Kinda sucks when your base is a buncha ‘tards. Trig is genetically predisposed to Teabaggerism.
Michael @1,
I stand by my well-couched prose:
So please don’t try to take the thread off topic but nitpicking a distinction without difference.
The point is, the minimum wage proved a bad issue for Rossi. Heading into that debate, Rossi had momentum… momentum he lost after the minimum wage issue got some air underneath it.
“Republicans only support rich people.” My Dad told me that when I was nine years old in 1964. To this day, I’ve never seen anything to prove otherwise.
The republicans obsessive compulsion with taxes has made rich people incredibly rich, while average working people have earned pennies from these same tax cuts. They gave us a few pennies in tax cuts and proceeded to rob us blind on all the rest of our money. Now they are coming after Social Security for the exact same reasons – it will benefit rich people. You ever notice that all the people trashing Social Security are set for life and never will need the money? It is the final step in the fleecing of the working class. Assholes one and all.
Re 5
Your dad was wrong, and so are you. I’m sure he and you are good citizens and hard workers. Kudos. But Republicans support economic liberty, whether that benefits the Wall Street tycoon or the hardware store owner on Main.
For progressives this can be a difficult concept to grasp, but the government doesn’t really own all my property and grant me an allowance to live on. At least, they think they do under the unholy trinity of Reid Obama and Pelosi, but they don’t.
Working people have precisely the same opportunities to as the wealthy. What they do with it is their business, but poverty is not an automatic hold on the contents of your neighbors wallet supported by tax system.
How exactly are you being robbed blind? Is anyone proposing to take 70% of your money in taxes, as good lefties do? Is anyone asking you to carry the burden of your less financially secure fellow citizens on the flimsy pretext that ‘you can afford it?’
Close to 50% of taxpayers pay no taxes in our country, efectively. They gain in entitlement programs more than they pay in taxes. Under Obama most observers think this will exceed the 50% ‘tipping point.’ This means a majority of citizens will pay no taxes to support their country. They will, however, whine about the unfair tax system and how the rich pay no taxes. A percent at the bottom actually is paid cash money (EITC, AFDC etc) for being citizens, money stolen from my wallet.
Social Security was a well intentioned but stupid idea and is a poor investment. People trashing it do so because, while ‘set for life,’ they will get no benefit from the taxes they paid for that system, as they will be inelegible due to income. Heck, if I was being robbed like that… wait, I AM!
Progressives/Dems/Libs aren’t assholes. They have, in my opinion, a frighteningly short term view of policy. They are on the road to hell with the famous paving. But they are well meaning, mostly. Just wrong.
@4
Yeah, I guess that was a bit off topic.
re 6: “…
Your statement makes sense in a 7th grade civics book, but not in the real world of multi-national monopoly capitalism where the hardware store owner has little access to real capital — unless he’s a Home Depot or something similar.
Don’t waste your time peddling your nonsense here.
Minnesota is a sensible state. I was conceived, though not quite born, there. Minnesota has the best Senator in the whole of the United States–say it with me slowly, wingies, “Senator Al Franken.” Minnesota will do the right, which means left, thing. It must hurt to be a wingie.
Lost @ 6: In other words, a law against sleeping under bridges applies equally to the rich and the poor, so therefore it is equally fair for both of them?
Look, everytime I get really upset with the Democrats, I wonder if perhaps I should change parties. About then the Republicans take office, and I’m reminded again why I’m a Democrat.
All this talk about future 70% taxation of the wealthy is hyperbole and propoganda by the GOP. We haven’t seen tax rates that high since shortly after WWII. The current highest federal income tax rates of roughly 1/3 at the highest income levels only applies to those working for a living, the rich pay only 15% on most of their income (long-term capital gains). Even then, they have a multitude of ways around it, mainly by holding onto their investments until they die, at which point the capital gains are never taxed at all because their heirs take it on a “stepped-up basis”.
Everytime the Democrats are in charge, the Republicans suddenly wring their hands and cry about budget deficits and the level of federal debt. They cry to the evangelicals about the lack of prayer in public schools, and abortion.
But as soon as the Republicans come into office (Reagan and Bush especially), the first thing they do is cut taxes to the wealthy, give huge government contracts to a select few private companies, and and let corporations know that existing regulations will be cut back, or simply not enforced. Everything else falls by the wayside – deficit reduction is put off indefinately, evangelicals are told to keep sending in their money and continue to vote for Republicans, maybe they can address their concerns “next time around”.
Their priorities are, and always have been, clear.
6. lostinaseaofblue
I love when you open with this mellow, evenhanded, middle-of-the-road bullcrap that turns in seconds to:
You know, because you’re so reasonable and will grant to your political opponents the same understanding you from them.
Economic liberty is like personal liberty, where your right to swing your fist stops at my nose. When economic libery turns into a crime against the commons, as when the financial shenanigans, excessive leveraging of all-but-fictitious economic instruments, and irresponsible and predatory lending practices of chiefly American financial institutions plunged the entire world into recession, they’re damn well going to forfeit some of their “liberty” right now.
But I assume you mean taxation by your elected represenatives (which on the federal level is the lowest it’s been in fifty years) which is usually all any Republican means.
Economic stratification is high and economic (social) mobolity is very low. What does that mean? It means that it is not true that “Working people have precisely the same opportunities to as the wealthy.”
But poverty hurts us all. Poor people raise poor, less-educated children, who not only will not fill the skill gaps we face in the future but also will be the first unemployed, and unemployment breeds crime. We all have an interest in ameliorating all of these conditions.
To answer your question: nope, no one is proposing that.
I’sd say no, but this is so vague as to mean just about anything? As one example, though, mortgage cramdown will reduce the number of foreclosures without harming you. As for something like extending unemployment benefits during this jobs crisis, it’s not free but inot being suggested becayuse “you” (whoever that is) can afford it, but because we can’t afford NOT to. I don’t know, do Republicans think that denyingg unemployment benefits to people 99 weeks unemployed will result in them suddently becoming emplyed?
Absolutely wrong, “effectively.” Same old GOP bullshit of looking at the federal income tax and ignoring all other taxes and fees. All poor people pay sales tax. Every person who works pays FICA taxes on dollar one and all dollars thereafter, but rich people stop paying at about $100K. Is that fair? You keep telling the mifddle class that they pay soem sort of horrific tax burden,then tell us in your next breath that they pay no taxes. Which is it?
This needs factual support. Got any? What entitlement programs do 50% of the country receive?
Utter bullshit.
No, legal taxes enacted by your elected representatives.
It is a pay-as-you-go social insurance “safety net” program, not an investment. However, their adminstrative overhead is 1.5%. What to you think Goldman Sachs charges?
Liar. SS benefits are not means tested.
Manweller is a professor at CWU? A state-worker? Get off the pubic tit and meet a payroll!
Who’s the alternative to Patty Murray?… “Whose Shoes Will You Choose?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0QOt7u-cHM
PAUL AKERS.
Oh the political rhetoric – how about electing an innovator, job creator, small business man, father, husband, an enlightened man who empowers his employees.
He is not a politician by any means. What a breath of fresh air. His name:
PAUL AKERS.
Visit his web site at http://www.akersforussenate.com. If you like what you see, host a meet and greet in your neighborhood and he will come and speak and have a question and answer period. Democrats and Republicans alike are supporting him. He doesn’t look at parties to divide us, rather he treats each person as having something valuable to say. He empowers people. He is full of common sense to ensure that we work together to get results.
Polls show that he is closing the gap – again, check out his website at http://www.akersforussenate.com.