Hard labor for Republican presidential hopefuls

By Kyle Roerink

Sunday, Sept. 27, 2015 | 2 a.m.

What do you do with a problem like a union?

Organized labor poses a dilemma for the GOP: Do Republicans play against unions to gain support from conservatives, like Ronald Reagan did in 1981 when he fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers? Or do they try to sweet-talk union members, also like Reagan, who peeled off blue-collar voters on social issues?

Real estate mogul Donald Trump and former candidate Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker have taken two very different approaches — with two very different results, both in Nevada and nationally.

Walker, who dropped out of the race Sept. 21, was the loudest union critic in the presidential field. He used a recent trip to Las Vegas, one of the nation’s remaining union strongholds, to unveil a plan that would have eliminated federal employee unions and the board that enforces federal labor laws.

Walker’s campaign strategy made sense on paper: Cast unions as a foil in his appeal to conservative Republican voters. It worked for him in Wisconsin —well enough to win election as governor there twice, as well as to beat back a recall effort. But, it failed to pay off nationally.

In fact, it may have even backfired. When Walker was asked how we would handle Islamic terrorism as president, he pointed to his battles with labor, saying, “If I could take on a hundred-thousand protesters, I could do the same across the world.”

As The Washington Post asked last week, “Did Scott Walker bow out because people don’t hate unions as much as he thought?” (Yes.)

So what’s a Republican candidate to do? Some, like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose tussles with teachers unions in his state rival anything on “Boardwalk Empire,” and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who backed anti-union laws similar to the ones touted by Walker, may be tempted to pick up the baton from Walker.

But another tactic may come from an actual union member. Thanks to numerous movie cameos, Trump carries a Screen Actors Guild card. Guess which Republican president wasn’t just a SAG member, but its leader? It was Reagan.

Instead of beating up on industrial labor, Trump plays to blue-collar union members on issues like immigration restrictions, protectionist tariffs on foreign goods and opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. There’s also no candidate in the race who currently matches Trump’s appeal to the hard-hat crowd.

So could 2016 be the year that Reagan Democrats become Trump Republicans?

Not so fast. The mogul is fighting a unionization drive at the Las Vegas hotel that bears his name.

All of this leaves the door open for perhaps another Republican candidate to synthesize the various GOP positions.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s father was a Culinary Union member, and Rubio has signaled empathy for organized labor. In his book, “An American Son,” Rubio praised a 1984 strike by Culinary. “The strike became my new obsession,” Rubio wrote. “I never grasped all the issues involved but understood generally that the strikers were just asking to be treated fairly.”