Dave Kieffer, the new California SEIU executive director, wants you to think he’s really onto something. Kieffer has mysteriously calculated that 87,000 of SEIU’s 700,000 unionized workers in California are Republicans and by Dave’s reckoning, that makes SEIU a potent force in California GOP politics. Or at least that’s the smoke he’s blowing this week. “SEIU needs to build a Republican program to play in Republican districts for our Republican members and for our broader self-interest,” Kieffer told Calbuzz, as if there were enough lipstick in the world to disguise the broader self-interests of SEIU as palatable to any Republican in their right mind. What Kieffer is really saying is SEIU intends to throw its considerable California clout at unseating vulnerable Republicans who find themselves in the mega-union’s crosshairs for not behaving when warned. And claiming to represent SEIU Republican members is only Keiffer’s sly way of excusing union intrusion into GOP primaries. “The tensions between the public sector unions and the Republicans are at an all time high but there’s nothing that says we can’t work with them.” (The “or else” is implied.) SEIU would support ball-playing Republicans either with outright campaign help or by going negative with an independent expenditure against “unreasonable” GOP opponents who might dare to think with their own minds. Meanwhile, in a move surely endorsed by all 87,000 loyal SEIU Republicans, the union launched “the first wave of a seven-figure advertising campaign planned for the coming weeks as California races toward a June 15 deadline for adopting a state budget.’ The ad campaign “…calls on California legislators to work together to ‘stop extreme cuts” that threaten our families’ safety and security.” [19] One can only assume SEIU is demanding either more debt or higher taxes in lieu of “extreme cuts” although that too goes without saying. Meanwhile, just up the coast, SEIU has started a petition drive in Washington to repeal the state’s sales tax exemption for out-of-state residents. According to Washington Public Disclosure Commission filings, the union has transferred $500,000 into an account dedicated to passing the measure, Initiative 1167. Ending the exemption, which is popular with retailers, would yield an estimated $66 million per biennium to fund training programs for SEIU home-care workers. Last week, a coalition of Southwest Washington business leaders wrote an open letter to legislators urging them to retain the tax break for out-of-state residents, noting that some local companies get 18 to 25 percent of their business from Oregon. Surely this effort too enjoys the full-throated endorsement of SEIU Republicans for Bigger Government.
