Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley — the man in charge of seeing to the election of Democratic governors in the current cycle — says that the fights between Republican governors and union workers across the Midwest is just the kind of thing that could stop the Republican tide and put Democrats back in charge.
“It certainly draws the contrast doesn’t it?” O’Malley, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, told TPM in an interview this weekend.
“I think because of the difficulty and the challenges and what we’ve all lost in this recession, the distinction between Democratic and Republican governors became a little bit blurred for some,” he said, reflecting on the Democratic losses of 2010. “But I think it’s pretty clear now the sort of ideological detour that these governors are taking when all of us should be creating jobs, contrasting with our message of job opportunity now.”
What’s more, O’Malley said, the war over collective bargaining rights for state workers has fractured the Republican political agenda just as the the new tea party-backed GOP governors were getting started.
“I think the GOP governors are not totally monolithic in this,” he said. “I think some of them are trying to distance themselves from the sort of anti-union, sharpen my axe stuff.”
There are signs O’Malley may be right. Though his counterparts at the Republican Governors Association have tried to turn the high-profile Wisconsin fight over collective bargaining into a national rallying cry, some Republican governors have declined to follow the lead of Wisconsin’s embattled Gov. Scott Walker.
But Walker and Govs. like John Kasich (OH) who are attempting similar anti-union measures, may have already done damage to the GOP’s image, said O’Malley. Damage, he said, Democrats are keen to capitalize on.
“Some of the GOP governors I think are having a tough time distancing themselves from the damage that that sort of mean-spirited behavior is doing to their brand and their label,” O’Malley said.
