An article worth reading…

I thought some of you might want to read the article Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote about the contributions Labor Unions made to Mark Ridley-Thomas.

-Bernard C. Parks

Unions expect they can buy Ridley-Thomas' support

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Columnist

Article Last Updated: 05/17/2008 09:08:45 PM PDT

TALK about gross overkill. What else could anyone call a special-interest group's dumping a record $2.5million (with $1.5million more on the way) into a single campaign?

That's how much Los Angeles labor unions are pouring into the campaign kitty of state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, D-Los Angeles, who is running against L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks for a seat on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.

To get around campaign-finance limits, the unions funnel the cash through independent committees. It's all perfectly legal, and it's all perfectly a sham to nab a supervisor's seat.

Local unions have always pumped lots of cash into the campaigns of candidates they consider to be the most labor-friendly. But generally they have stayed within some recognizable bounds of spending proprieties. The Ridley-Thomas spending plunge obliterates that fine line.

It's no surprise why. The supervisors manage the biggest county government in the nation. The more than 100,000 employees on the county payroll are the most in the country.

But the county is also tens of millions in the budget hole. That means there will soon be deep slashes in spending on health and social services. With a projected budget deficit of nearly $200million for the county health department, for instance, the board talks of closing nearly all of the dwindling number of county-run health clinics but one. Other strapped county service agencies will be hit hard to make up for the shortfall.

That, in turn, means employee freezes, cuts in benefits and wages, maybe even layoffs. In these times, the public-employee unions want and need the most dependable labor-friendly guy they can get to keep a hawklike watch over efforts to gut employee contracts and minimize the pain of employee cuts.

With millions at stake in labor benefits and jobs, the cash the unions are shelling out to grab the election for Ridley-Thomas seems like a relatively small price to protect fully labor's back.

Parks, on the other hand, is the last politician the unions want on the board. He is a business-friendly fiscal conservative. He would be much more likely to take a long look at union contracts and pensions, and to fight anything he construes as excessive giveaways to county unions.

Parks loudly protests the unions' heavy-handed spending on one candidate in a local race that decidedly un-levels the election playing field. He screams that the hefty union payoff to Ridley-Thomas is proof that he's in the hip pocket of labor.

His complaint can't be waved off. Parks is no slouch when it comes to fundraising. He nearly doubled Ridley-Thomas' total in the first quarter of this year, with much of it coming from business groups. Yet even that pales compared with the king's ransom Ridley-Thomas has received from labor.

Ridley-Thomas' suddenly swollen campaign war chest means that Parks now must work that much harder to pump the spigots from business groups and other campaign donors. And the prospect that Parks could get even more cash from business groups is one more reason that labor has upped the dollar ante for Ridley-Thomas.

For his part, Ridley-Thomas scoffs at the charge that he'll be a compliant yes-man on the board for labor unions. He says that he has business support, too. He does. But the endorsements of a handful of prominent business leaders and the relatively small amount of money they've contributed to his campaign hardly add up to any semblance of balance between business and labor interests.

When the supervisors get around to making the inevitable tough decisions on labor contracts, wages, benefits and possible job cuts, the hard fact is that labor will expect Ridley-Thomas to toe its line on resisting any cuts or givebacks, no matter how bad a shape the county's finances are in, and how fiscally prudent the cuts are.

Labor unions can't be faulted for doing what they do best, and that's tossing their cash at a candidate that they think will do their loyal bidding once in office. Business groups do the same. The problem is that the far-over-the-top kind of heavy cash that the unions shoved out to Ridley-Thomas reinforces the deep public suspicion and even public disgust that candidates and their votes are for sale to the highest bidder.

That might not be the case with Ridley-Thomas. At least he says not anyway. Yet with $4million in his pocket, voters' eyes should stay riveted on him to see if he really means it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, an author and political analyst, is a frequent contributor to the Daily News. He blogs at insidesocal.com/friendlyfire.