Buchanan Laboring to Woo Workers: Will It Play Here?

Count me as one guy hoping that Pat Buchanan stays in the thick of the Republican Party primary race. With Buchanan gone, would anyone else carry the debate on the American worker’s slippery hold on job security? Most likely, the answer is no, so Let’s Stand Pat for at least another couple months.

Besides, the California primary is only 34 days away, and it will be interesting to see what kind of vote a still-contending Buchanan would pull in Orange County. His candidacy can answer two questions about the local Republican electorate: Socially, just how conservative is it? Economically, what happens when Buchanan’s pitch to workers butts heads with Orange County’s increasing role in international trade?

Interesting, this proposed marriage between Buchanan and labor. Once upon a time, anyone as conservative as Buchanan would be hung in effigy in any union hall in the country. But watch him campaign these days, and there he goes again--arguing that American workers are taking it in the neck while their corporate bosses and shareholders continue to thrive.

I find myself asking, hmm, just how enticing is a Buchanan candidacy to organized labor? Could he get a significant labor vote?

I posed the question to Doug Saunders, business manager at Local 441 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Santa Ana. He’s voted Democratic most of his life and is still a Bill Clinton man, but, yes, he’s paying attention to the Buchanan candidacy.

“I think that’s a tremendous issue,” Saunders says of Buchanan’s working-man crusade. “We did a survey all over the United States [of IBEW members], and the biggest concern wasn’t crime or education. It was the disappearance of the middle class.”

I asked what that means, in everyday terms.

“The family structure, the values and the dream, you know?” Saunders says. “We’ve seen it here in Orange County. For a lot of years, you had the dream of having your own home, but a lot of people now are feeling trapped.”

Many families need two incomes to pay bills, and longer commutes and child-care needs add up to a weakened family structure, Saunders says. “It’s just harder to raise a family and get ahead. I talk to a lot of people, and they don’t see things in their future like owning a house. They don’t even see owning a new car.”

Saunders acknowledges Buchanan’s pro-worker remarks during his campaign but wonders if his commitment is real.

“I’m just naturally suspicious,” he says. “My guess is, he’s reaching across and trying to get votes away from Clinton. We figure Clinton is for the American worker. We didn’t like NAFTA, and we felt Clinton let us down on that, but I think he’s starting to realize he didn’t like it as well as he thought.”

But, Saunders says, some dark feelings among American workers can be tapped.

“Frustration, despair, anger, you could use them all,” he says. “For the last six years, with the recession, the average worker was lucky to make $20,000 a year. I’ve got 80 to 100 people [from the local union] out of town now, working in the Bay Area, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, places like that.” Those are the only jobs they can find, he says.

Saunders is still committed to Clinton but says his 1,400 members include more Republicans than Democrats. The membership isn’t caught up in the presidential race yet and wonders if Buchanan will even be a factor come summer.

“Traditionally, the majority of the Republican Party is against it [worker protection]. I don’t see how he [Buchanan] could get elected in his own party if he stood firm on it.”

Buchanan’s protectionist philosophy won’t fly in Orange County, according to a leading local economist.

“We don’t have any single industry that’s going to be a major beneficiary if we go that route,” says Esmael Adibi, director of the Center for Economic Research at Chapman University.

Some workers who have lost jobs might like Buchanan’s positions, but protectionism can stand in the way of lower prices of goods and services and “consumers as a whole are going to be the losers,” Adibi says.

Buchanan is combating forces that stem from both domestic and foreign competition, Adibi says, likening it to the era when phone operators lost jobs to technology.

I asked Adibi if any candidate could effectively address workers’ concerns.

No, he says.

“It’s an evolutionary process,” he says, “and we’re going to have continuous turnover in the job market. That’s something we can’t really stop.”

He may be right, but Doug Saunders is accurately reading people too. The scenario has all the makings of classic public policy debate, and what better place to have it than Southern California?

Hang in there, Mr. Buchanan. We can’t have the debate without you.

Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.