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Romney under fire for refusal to endorse Ohio union legislation
Mitt Romney, visiting a phone bank for the Ohio Republican Party on Tuesday, said he wasn’t taking sides on the contentious ballot issue that concerns government union worker rights.
"I am not speaking about the particular ballot issues," Romney said, according to CNN. His comments were made after thanking GOP volunteers for making calls on Ohio ballot issues 2 and 3. Issue 2 overturns Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich’s bill to limit collective bargaining rights by government union workers. Issue 3 forbids the individual health insurance mandate.
“Those are up to the people of Ohio. But I certainly support the efforts of the governor to reign in the scale of government,” Romney said. “I am not terribly familiar with the two ballot initiatives. But I am certainly supportive of the Republican Party's efforts here."
Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern called Romney a hypocrite in a conference call later on Tuesday. “Romney can’t take back his support of issue 2 simply because he read the results of the Quinnipiac poll this morning,” Redfern said. “Coming to Ohio makes it clear where he stands.”
Fifty-seven percent of Ohio voters support the repeal of the collective bargaining legislation, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday.
Labor issues have been a hot button topic in the campaign cycle so far, due to controversial GOP-backed bills to limit government union workers' bargaining power in states including Ohio and Wisconsin, as well as the high-profile Boeing dispute in South Carolina.
Romney took sides in South Carolina’s union battle earlier this year, backing aerospace giant Boeing in an August speech that focused on Romney’s proposed labor policy. Romney criticized the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in that speech. The NLRB, an independent federal agency, issued a complaint against Boeing in April for moving an expansion project to South Carolina after a union strike in Washington state.
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