It’s Labor Day and Someone Forgot About Winning Hearts and Minds

Filed in Delaware by on September 1, 2014

Today was the Labor Day Parade in Downtown Wilmington — a long-standing tradition of organized labor, their families and supporters and (during an election year) politicians who want to be seen supporting labor marching down King St. This year, the union rat was also on parade courtesy of the Building Trades (I’m told — I was not at the parade this year) and this year, they put the face of John Kowalko on it — in protest of his not supporting the Newark Data Center. Pretty despicable behavior — especially towards someone who is routinely very supportive of labor issues in Dover. Even more delusional when you factor in the fact that Rep. Kowalko was actually representing his *constituents* in the Data Center matter. Even union members can get that sometimes the people that actually vote in an area are pretty important to hear — and in the long run, it isn’t as though they’d be able to replace him with someone who is more committed to labor issues. I’ll also point out that these folks taking the cowards’ route in criticizing Kowalko today haven’t been able to find anyone who could credibly run against him — and seriously labor folks, if you think you can get someone more supportive of your agenda AND make those residents happy, then man up and get that person to run against Kowalko. Otherwise, what you did today was not worthy of what today is supposed to represent and it was just basic bullshit. A picture (thanks to my anonymous source) of today’s labor bullshit is here:

09012014 rat

There are genuinely better targets for this critique today — starting with the entirety of the Delaware General Assembly, who ran away from making the Transportation Fund whole (with the jobs that would do the work of fixing and expanding the state’s infrastructure gone) and who also ran away from establishing a fund to clean up Delaware’s waterways, also a potentially rich vein for decent construction jobs. What legislators are out there that you routinely support and who routinely let you down? Get serious folks — there are real fights to be had and you were largely unheard from on the Transportation Tax issue.

I should also say I didn’t have a dog in this fight, except to push back against the hype. Your plant is not “State-of-the-Art” if it is burning fossil fuels. And it looks from here that the community got the outcome it wanted, so I don’t see that as a bad thing.

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"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

Comments (12)

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  1. Delaware Dem says:

    These cowardly thugs were too scared to challenge Kowalko in a primary, because they knew their candidate would be smoked by Kowalko. So they can shove their intimidation tactics up where the good Lord split them.

  2. AQC says:

    I agree with most of what you’re saying Cassandra, but, I think part of the issue is that union people felt like John was being two faced. According to very reliable sources, John told union reps and others he was going to remain neutral and silent but switched up for political expediency. They are as angry about this as they are his opposition to the project. That being said, if the unions could not even exert the energy to mount a campaign against him, it’s hard to feel sorry for them.

  3. cassandra_m says:

    I hadn’t heard the part about Kowalko promising to be neutral here, AQC. These unions might have cause to be mad then, but as someone who routinely writes about the craven motivations of local pols who *won’t* represent their constituents, political expediency when representing the people who vote for you looks OK from here.

  4. Nancy Willing says:

    Thanks for getting this posted Cassandra.

    As for little miss anony AQC, you are telling tales as if you are a union surrogate.

    What you/they have stated is a gross distortion.

    They must be feeling the pushback from everyone for this despicable action taken today.

    This is what happened between Kowalko and the unions as I understand it:

    After first hearing about TDC’s proposal at a June 2013 Newark City Council meeting, Kowalko maintained through four or so initial meetings with TDC CEO Gene Kern and his posse (Brian McGlinchey, Vince D’Anna, Nello Paoli etc.) that he would remain neutral on the data center if they could answer questions with facts and numbers and resolve the community’s concerns truthfully.

    They failed to do that.

    After the town hall at Newark High School it became painfully clear that there were no facts and true numbers to be had. The goal posts shifted and the ground moved underfoot. No one was being honest about what the hell was going to happen with this project.

    So as I understand it, Kowalko made it known to the small group that he was under no obligation to support the power plant and, as he was not against jobs, he would still support a data center and not use an argument against fossil fuels.

    If this company had a straight story to tell. If their own facts and numbers added up then they would have prevailed. At the end of the day, read the UD report. That is basically what they concluded. TDC could not be trusted.

  5. AQC says:

    If I was a union surrogate would I be criticizing them for being to lazy to put someone up against him. And, Nancy, just because you disagree with me doesn’t mean you’re right. And, I’m not making an argument for or against the power plant.

  6. cassandra_m says:

    If I was a union surrogate would I be criticizing them for being to lazy to put someone up against him.

    This.

    They had time to primary Kowalko, and apparently couldn’t do it. Just parading around the rat is not a substitute for getting in the game and changing what you need changed. Because now everyone knows that all you’ve got is namecalling. Which (if I remember correctly) was about all they could muster when the community was debating this thing.

  7. SussexAnon says:

    So it was all Kowalkos fault for the data center failure? Wow. Can I vote for him for gov? We could use someone with a pair in the mansion right about now.

    The longer the data center plan went on, the less real it sounded.

  8. Joanne Christian says:

    I was wondering if they still had that parade. As a kid I remember going and the electricians threw out those little pins that have the bolt and face on it. I always thought that that was “our” design from Delaware. Couldn’t believe 25 years later, when looking thru the Yellow Pages in another state for an electrician–everybody had that design in their ad! Oh, another epiphany of not being so special–even if you are from Delaware.

    Picnics used to be big also after the Labor Day parade. Brandywine Springs Park–all the soda you could drink, and not even share the can!! Bid deal to a kid in the 60’s!!

  9. Jason330 says:

    I think we can all stipulate that John Kowalko is an ass. But if you can’t see that he is labor’s best friend in Leg Hall you either have an agenda or a screw loose (probably both).

    This story can go in the time capsule marked as “Why ‘Organized’ Labor Sucked Ass and Couldn’t Get Shit Done: 1992- 2014”

  10. kavips says:

    This infuriates me. This stupid stunt puts prevailing wage in jeopardy. That is a very controversial proposal that hangs by threads each subsequent year, but one thread holding it from repeal, just got cut. That would be all of Newark’s representatives in the General Assembly. Unions just got a black eye..

    I’m even thinking of pulling my support.

    Very stupid move by James Maravelias.

  11. Painesme says:

    Yeah, the building trades union, that glorious paragon of sensibility and workers rights even as they support Right to Work Republicans across the country. This is exactly the stuff I would expect from them.

  12. SussexWatcher says:

    The fact that unions still use a giant fucking rat as their dominant attention-getting technique says a lot about their sophistication and messaging. Amateur hour. It’s 2014, and you can’t come up with something better?