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Labor-backed Ohio poll shows Romney, Perry could suffer from backing anti-union law

Opponents of an Ohio law that curbed collective bargaining rights cheer at a rally co-sponsored by the Cleveland Teachers Union and We Are Ohio in Cleveland as they hear election results sounding the law's repeal in the Ohio general election Nov. 8, 2011. By voting no on Issue 2, Ohioans overturned the controversial Senate Bill 5 which, among other things, limited collective bargaining for 350,000 unionized public workers.
Opponents of an Ohio law that curbed collective bargaining rights cheer at a rally co-sponsored by the Cleveland Teachers Union and We Are Ohio in Cleveland as they hear election results sounding the law's repeal in the Ohio general election Nov. 8, 2011. AP Photo

A labor-backed poll out of Ohio found that Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry could suffer in the general election because of their support for the controversial collective bargaining law that Ohio voters on Tuesday nightchose to repeal.

By a nearly 2-1 margin, Ohio voters on Tuesday decided to toss out the Republican-backed law nearly eliminating the collective bargaining rights of Ohio's more than 350,000 public workers. Opponents said the result showed that Ohio voters saw the law as an over-reach on the part of Republican Gov. John Kasich and the state legislature.

Yet it remains unclear if the vote signals a new groundswell of support for union rights and other Democratic-backed positions ahead of the 2012 elections.

Whatever the case may be, a poll commissioned by the labor organization the AFL-CIO suggests that voters in the crucial swing state are not pleased that two prominent Republican presidential candidates backed the law.

The poll, conducted November 6 to 8 by Hart Research Associates, a Democratic firm, showed that about half of Ohio voters would be less likely to vote for Romney or Perry in the general election because of their support for the collective bargaining law, known as SB 5.

Forty-nine percent of voters said they'd be less likely to support Romney because of his support for SB 5, while 19 percent said his position made them more likely to support him. Similarly, 51 percent said they'd be less likely to support Perry because of his support, while 18 percent said they'd be more likely.

"If you make war on workers it's not a good electoral strategy," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday. "Mitt Romney's probably going to understand that when he sees the poll as well."

Romney's statements last month suggest the GOP candidate may have been aware that SB 5 was a dangerous topic. When visiting Ohio last month, the former Massachusetts governor declined to comment about the issue -- even though the Ohio Republican party said he was there in part to rally phone bank volunteers in support of the law. After Romney caught flak for refusing to align with the Ohio GOP, he appeared a day later in Virginia and said he strongly supported Ohio's law.

Trumka said that Ohio's decision to repeal SB 5 "will reverberate across the country," sending a message to politicians that they "need to stop scapegoating workers" for the weak economy. He called the vote "an important landmark for the 99 percent," referencing the phrase the Occupy Wall Street protesters have used to refer to Americans that aren't part of the nation's richest 1 percent.

The national dialogue about income equality began with the protests against anti-union laws in Wisconsin earlier this year, Trumka said, and continue with the Occupy protests.

"That conversation will not end until Americas once again a middle class country," he said.

Still, the displeasure voters expressed with the anti-union law doesn't mean voters are necessarily ready to rally for the Democratic party in 2012. In addition to repealing SB 5, Ohio voters on Tuesday also voted to rebuke the individual mandate -- a key portion of President Obama's health care overhaul.

A White House spokesman told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that states can already opt out the individual mandate in 2017 and that "state ballot initiatives have no impact on the pace of implementation."

The poll commissioned by the AFL-CIO did not ask voters about the health care ballot initiative, and Trumka dismissed it as a distraction from the union rights debate.

"I think it's actually pretty shameful to put up a pretend initiative about health care reform," said Trumka, referring to the fact that it will have no impact on the law's implementation. "The other side spent a lot of time, money and effort distorting [the health care issue] to increase turnout and take a shot at President Obama. It obviously didn't work."

Campaign finance filings ahead of the election showed that supporters of the initiative to repeal the individual mandate spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on their cause -- much less than the millions spent on both sides of the debate over SB 5.

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