LITTLE ROCK — Lt. Gov. Bill Halter on Monday refused to say whether he would vote for or against the Employee Free Choice Act, which is proposed legislation that would make it easier for unions to organize in nonunion businesses.
He is challenging U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln in the May 18 Democratic primary.
Lincoln was a co-sponsor of the legislation. Then a year ago she said she wouldn’t support it.
Unions, upset with Lincoln’s switch, support Halter and have run television ads against her.
When asked about Halter’s stance on the act after a new video accused him of not being forthright on the matter, Halter’s campaign pointed out some things Halter has said about the measure, sometimes called “card check.” Halter spokesman Laura Chapin said Halter in an April 24 debate said a compromise “is being discussed by a number of senators” that would speed up elections and put more penalties in place.
“Card check is not going to come back on the table,” Halter said. “It’s just that simple. Labor leaders say that card check is not something that will get passed in the current Senate, and it’s not something likely to get passed in the next Senate.”
Lincoln has said she hadn’t “seen” the compromise Halter referred to. Halter said her Arkansas colleague, Sen. Mark Pryor, was working on the compromise. Halter said nothing had been put in writing so far as he knew, so he hadn’t “seen” it, either.
Pryor said last week that the legislation is not “off the table” as far as he knows and that no compromise meetings have been held since June. Also last week, The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, quoted Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, as saying labor hopes to attach the act to some other piece of legislation and enact it in that fashion.
Halter’s campaign responded by showing a copy of a column by Stephens Media columnist John Brummett, who wrote that a national labor leader told him a year ago that unions had given up on card check.
Meantime, a group called Coalition for Arkansas Jobs released a video about the “card check” measure that says Lincoln and U.S. Rep. Mike Ross. D-Ark., “have taken a stand against it. But one Arkansas leader won’t say where he stands. He’s told the AFL-CIO, but he won’t tell us. Do we have to lose 600,000 jobs before Bill Halter has the guts to tell us where he stands?”
The group described itself as funded by businesses “that preserve good working relationships with their employees and strive each day to compete successfully in a 21st century economy.”
Robert Coon, state director of the group, said he doesn’t have to disclose donors because it’s an issue-oriented ad, not directed at a particular candidate. The group is sending mailers to 73,000 households, he said.
Halter was endorsed by the AFL-CIO in March after speaking to union leaders in a meeting closed to the news media. Arkansas AFL-CIO President Alan Hughes at the time declined to say what Halter told him regarding the legislation.
Another Halter spokesman, Garry Hoffmann, called the coalition’s video “yet another lie attacking” Halter and said Halter’s statements to the AFL-CIO have been no different than his public statements.
The card check legislation has had no major action since it was referred to committee in March 2009.
The Halter campaign also renewed its call for Lincoln to ask a group, Americans for Job Security, to disclose its donors. That group is running television ads - more than $1 million worth, according to Halter - regarding a decision by a company on whose board Halter served to hire people in India.
“Why hasn’t Sen. Lincoln publicly called for Americans for Job Security to identify their contributors in the spirit of transparency that she touted at the April 24 debate?” Chapin asked.
What Lincoln said at that debate was: “I’d be loving to make sure that people would tell who they are instead of making cagey names or putting them at the bottom of their ads or their postcards or anything else.”
Lincoln campaign manager Steve Patterson said Friday that Lincoln has nothing to do with Americans for Job Security and doesn’t have “a dog in a fight” between the group and Halter. The Lincoln campaign’s response did not include calling on Americans for Job Security to disclose its donors.
On Tuesday, Lincoln spokesman Katie Laning Niebaum declined to say why Lincoln hasn’t called for Americans for Job Security to reveal their donors, given the senator’s remark April 24.
Niebaum said that Lincoln supports the DISCLOSE Act, which Niebaum said would require corporations, unions and other organizations that make political expenditures to disclose their donors.
She also said Lincoln “believes the group should identify their contributors.” She did not say that Lincoln would ask them to do so.
The Halter camp also released a photo of what it said was the mailing address of Americans for Job Security - a postal box in a UPS store in Alexandria, Va.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 05/11/2010