Teachers’ Union Pretends Nothing Happened
posted at 10:32 am on June 6, 2012 by Mike Antonucci
I’ll bet you didn’t know that all that money and manpower the Wisconsin Education Association Council and the National Education Association poured into Wisconsin over the last 16 months was designed to get John Lehman elected to the state senate.
That’s what we’re to believe if we read the post-election output from the unions’ communications departments.
As I write this at 9:25 am Wisconsin time, the WEAC home page doesn’t have single word about Gov. Walker’s victory. It did publish a news release about the election results. Its headline is:
“Lehman declares victory in 21st Senate District recall race“
The union’s Facebook page doesn’t mention the gubernatorial results, nor any of the other four races WEAC lost.
And if all you did was follow WEAC’s Twitter feed last night, you still wouldn’t know that Walker won. While news outlets were projecting Walker the winner and Barrett was conceding, WEAC was tweeting about how many people were still in line in Milwaukee.
The headline of the NEA press release reads:
“Educator’s victory restores balance of power in Wisconsin state Senate“
At least NEA president Dennis Van Roekel noticed the governor won, deriding “the corporate cash that funded the campaign of Governor Scott Walker.” Yes, being outspent on a critical campaign is no fun.
Blowback
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Thing is, the Wisconsin state Senate has adjourned for the year. There’s a new election in November, with redistricting. So this win in the Senate only matters if the governor calls the legislature back into session, which is unlikely.
In other words, it’s completely meaningless.
Steven Den Beste on June 6, 2012 at 10:46 AM
You can kind of understand focusing on the few bright spots in a dismal night, even if it is for an election where the Wisconsin Senate won’t meet again (barring emergency) until after the next election. But for a teachers union to pretend something didn’t happen makes them come across a lot like educators in other countries of the past, who selectively taught the facts based on ideology (and where the facts could change from day to day, depending on who was in and who was out of favor — something for President Obama to remember if he loses this fall and finds out after the fact that the public sector unions supposedly never liked him in the first place).
jon1979 on June 6, 2012 at 10:47 AM
Who says I was run over by a truck…?
Ragspierre on June 6, 2012 at 10:47 AM
What? If they don’t talk about it, it didn’t happen?
Night Owl on June 6, 2012 at 11:36 AM
LOL. I can’t hear you!
JoseQuinones on June 6, 2012 at 12:00 PM
good news/bad news…good news “you have 24 hours to live”…bad news “I was supposed to tell you that yesterday”…
teejk on June 6, 2012 at 3:26 PM
The best thing that came out of this election is that Lehman after Nov. will always be former “State Senator Lehman”.
KenInIL on June 6, 2012 at 8:07 PM
Wild guess here: tho he’ll likely NEVER put in a day’s real work, by the mere fact of having been elected, Lehman now qualifies to collect all the bennies, perks, & a spiffy retirement package .. ??
Shaa-zaammm
/.
CaveatEmpty on June 6, 2012 at 11:18 PM