Wisconsin Puts Obama Between Competing Desires
By JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON — The battle in Wisconsin over public employee unions has left President Obama facing a tricky balance between showing solidarity with longtime political supporters and projecting a message in favor of deep spending cuts to reduce the debt.
Over the weekend, the White House and Democratic Party officials pushed back against criticism from Republicans that Mr. Obama and his political network were meddling in the Wisconsin dispute.
Administration officials said Sunday that the White House had done nothing to encourage the demonstrations in Wisconsin — nor was it doing so in Ohio, Florida and other states where new Republican governors are trying to make deep cuts to balance their budgets.
And, officials and union leaders said, reports of the involvement of the Democratic National Committee — specifically Organizing for America, the grass-roots network born of Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign — were overblown to start with and were being inflated by Republicans sensing political advantage.
“This is a Wisconsin story, not a Washington one,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “False claims of White House involvement are attempts to distract from the organic grass-roots opposition that is happening in Wisconsin.”
Before Mr. Obama complained late last week of an “assault” on the unions by the Republican governor in Wisconsin, Scott Walker, the Democratic Party had alerted its volunteers in Organizing for America to support the protests there and elsewhere, seeing an opening to show solidarity with the labor movement and rev up the party’s liberal base ahead of the 2012 elections.
By the weekend, national party officials were taking credit for encouraging the protests, especially through the use of Twitter and other online social networks.
But the party got involved, officials say, without consulting the political team at the White House, which is wary of getting distracted from Mr. Obama’s own budget confrontations with Republicans in Washington and upsetting his carefully nurtured position as an advocate for serious measures to address deficits.
On Sunday, Republicans continued to censure Mr. Obama for weighing in on the Madison fight. In an interview with a Milwaukee television station on Thursday, the president criticized Mr. Walker for his proposal to restrict the bargaining rights of public employee unions. Republicans also said that political organizers at Democratic headquarters were stoking the protests.
Among Mr. Obama’s critics was Governor Walker. “The president ultimately should stay focused on fixing the federal budget because they’ve got a huge deficit and, believe me, they got their hands full,” Mr. Walker said on “Fox News Sunday.” He also said “more and more” protesters were coming from other states.
At issue in Madison is less Mr. Walker’s proposed reduction in public employees’ pay and benefits and more his proposal to limit their collective bargaining rights. But people familiar with the protests say the national Democratic Party got engaged days after the demonstrations began and mostly after union officials, liberals and Wisconsin Democrats complained that the Obama organization was missing in action.
Mr. Obama has had strained relations with unions in general, and many do not believe he fights hard enough for their issues; public employee unions have been especially critical lately, since he proposed a two-year freeze of federal employees’ pay.
The Milwaukee television interview that was Mr. Obama’s first involvement in the Madison budget war was sought by the White House not to interject the president into the state’s fight but to promote his separate message concerning his own national budget-cutting drama: the station broadcasts into the district of the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, Representative Paul D. Ryan.
In the interview, the president sought to thread the needle between supporting the need for public employees to sacrifice while defending their bargaining rights: “Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where they’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions.”
That comment was “inappropriate,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on the NBC program “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“The governor of Wisconsin is doing what he campaigned on,” Mr. Graham added.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, disagreed. “I believe the president should have weighed in,” he said on the same program. “I think we should all weigh in and say, ‘Do the right thing for Wisconsin’s budget but do not destroy decades of work to establish the rights of workers to speak for themselves.’ ”
While Republicans seized the opportunity to depict Mr. Obama as siding against deficit-cutting efforts, some Democrats and union organizers said the political benefit ultimately could be theirs.
“This has really kind of put a shot in the arm of the unions and Democratic base,” said Eddie Vale, the political communications director at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., who is returning to Madison on Monday, when even bigger demonstrations are expected on a federal holiday. “If Republicans keep trying to do the same thing in state after state, they’re just going to be building the 2012 get-out-the-vote operation” for Democrats.
Over the weekend, the White House and Democratic Party officials pushed back against criticism from Republicans that Mr. Obama and his political network were meddling in the Wisconsin dispute.
Administration officials said Sunday that the White House had done nothing to encourage the demonstrations in Wisconsin — nor was it doing so in Ohio, Florida and other states where new Republican governors are trying to make deep cuts to balance their budgets.
And, officials and union leaders said, reports of the involvement of the Democratic National Committee — specifically Organizing for America, the grass-roots network born of Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign — were overblown to start with and were being inflated by Republicans sensing political advantage.
“This is a Wisconsin story, not a Washington one,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “False claims of White House involvement are attempts to distract from the organic grass-roots opposition that is happening in Wisconsin.”
Before Mr. Obama complained late last week of an “assault” on the unions by the Republican governor in Wisconsin, Scott Walker, the Democratic Party had alerted its volunteers in Organizing for America to support the protests there and elsewhere, seeing an opening to show solidarity with the labor movement and rev up the party’s liberal base ahead of the 2012 elections.
By the weekend, national party officials were taking credit for encouraging the protests, especially through the use of Twitter and other online social networks.
But the party got involved, officials say, without consulting the political team at the White House, which is wary of getting distracted from Mr. Obama’s own budget confrontations with Republicans in Washington and upsetting his carefully nurtured position as an advocate for serious measures to address deficits.
On Sunday, Republicans continued to censure Mr. Obama for weighing in on the Madison fight. In an interview with a Milwaukee television station on Thursday, the president criticized Mr. Walker for his proposal to restrict the bargaining rights of public employee unions. Republicans also said that political organizers at Democratic headquarters were stoking the protests.
Among Mr. Obama’s critics was Governor Walker. “The president ultimately should stay focused on fixing the federal budget because they’ve got a huge deficit and, believe me, they got their hands full,” Mr. Walker said on “Fox News Sunday.” He also said “more and more” protesters were coming from other states.
At issue in Madison is less Mr. Walker’s proposed reduction in public employees’ pay and benefits and more his proposal to limit their collective bargaining rights. But people familiar with the protests say the national Democratic Party got engaged days after the demonstrations began and mostly after union officials, liberals and Wisconsin Democrats complained that the Obama organization was missing in action.
Mr. Obama has had strained relations with unions in general, and many do not believe he fights hard enough for their issues; public employee unions have been especially critical lately, since he proposed a two-year freeze of federal employees’ pay.
The Milwaukee television interview that was Mr. Obama’s first involvement in the Madison budget war was sought by the White House not to interject the president into the state’s fight but to promote his separate message concerning his own national budget-cutting drama: the station broadcasts into the district of the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, Representative Paul D. Ryan.
In the interview, the president sought to thread the needle between supporting the need for public employees to sacrifice while defending their bargaining rights: “Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where they’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions.”
That comment was “inappropriate,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on the NBC program “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“The governor of Wisconsin is doing what he campaigned on,” Mr. Graham added.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, disagreed. “I believe the president should have weighed in,” he said on the same program. “I think we should all weigh in and say, ‘Do the right thing for Wisconsin’s budget but do not destroy decades of work to establish the rights of workers to speak for themselves.’ ”
While Republicans seized the opportunity to depict Mr. Obama as siding against deficit-cutting efforts, some Democrats and union organizers said the political benefit ultimately could be theirs.
“This has really kind of put a shot in the arm of the unions and Democratic base,” said Eddie Vale, the political communications director at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., who is returning to Madison on Monday, when even bigger demonstrations are expected on a federal holiday. “If Republicans keep trying to do the same thing in state after state, they’re just going to be building the 2012 get-out-the-vote operation” for Democrats.
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