Big Labor has been a significant part of the Democratic coalition since — oh, I don’t know — the birth of Big Labor. So, it must have come as a shock to the union bosses who’ve fought unusually furiously for “middle class principles” in one of this year’s biggest political battles — the state-by-state fight to reduce state employee pensions and other benefits — when the Democratic National Committee selected a prominent city in a right-to-work state as the seat of the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

No matter, though: Democrats had a plan. Led by Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx (“a Democrat with close ties to Obama,” The Daily Caller calls him), they would simultaneously feast on Charlotte’s nonexistent barbecue and roll in out-of-state union workers to replace local non-union workers. Ideally, they would do it undetected, so nobody in Charlotte would feel affronted and union bosses would be secretly pleased.

One problem: Republican mayoral challenger Scott Stone has been on to Foxx for some time now. At a recent press conference, Stone asked Foxx to pledge not to give convention jobs to out-of-state workers — but Foxx evaded.

Now, reports have surfaced that show Foxx and the other organizers of the Democratic National Convention have, in fact, discriminated against non-union shops in Charlotte.

The beauty of capitalism is such that the DNC can do what it wants. Nothing says convention organizers have to hire non-union workers. The typical advantage to non-union shops is that they keep labor costs low. If organizers want to pay more to retain the political support of major union bosses, that’s their prerogative. But one of the immutable laws of life is that decisions have consequences — and we can rarely have it “both ways.” In this case, Foxx risks upset constituents in Charlotte voting him out of office next Tuesday — and the president risks upsetting his host city and an important swing state.

Update: This post originally mistakenly stated that Charlotte is the capital of North Carolina, when (duh!) Raleigh is. My bad. The post has been corrected above.