Posted on 07/14/2002 9:42:33 AM PDT by PhiKapMom
Patrick B. McGuigan: Top 10 reasons freedom won
2002-07-14
By Patrick B. McGuigan
I HAVE shared in recent days a condensed version of Marc Nuttle's leadership role in passage of State Question 695, the most significant legal/ economic reform passed in Oklahoma in my lifetime.
Nuttle, now seeking the Republican nomination for the congressional seat J.C. Watts is vacating, has his own way of describing what happened. Here is a paraphrase of his "top 10 reasons" for victory in "The Freedom Campaign":
1. Freedom and liberty override all other arguments. No matter what the other side threw at supporters of the right to work in last year's campaign, even powerful messages of fear and economic envy, the public picked freedom.
2. Grass roots Reagan-style coalition politics still works. Nuttle and his colleagues in the SQ 695 campaign built one heck of a coalition. The "big tent" properly defined is still a winner. Each coalition member retained his or her identity. Support ranged from the Oklahoma Bankers Association (moderates, Democrats in many cases) to the Christian Coalition (conservatives, Republicans in most cases). Nuttle and his staff found ways to keep them all working together.
3. Personal contact is still important, in fact essential, in modern politics.
4. A united front became a fortress. Trusted and known politicians and others, business people, trade associations, prominent individuals, came together and, when the going got tough, defended each other. Even after the election, the unions and hard left continued attempts to intimidate members of the coalition. It didn't work. As Nuttle observed, "If we stay united, the other side is eroded."
5. People want local control of their families and their future, not national agendas that distort local views and values. The National Education Association and its agenda was a disaster for the other side; same for the other big unions.
6. Religion in politics is acceptable so long as it's not dominating. This reinforces past findings that about one-third of the electorate is evangelical/strongly religious; one-third of the electorate is neutral to sympathetic toward such people/views; and about one-third is simply hostile to such folks. Faith and morality themes worked in the pro-695 campaign, but they were not predominant, and that boosted the "yes" vote.
7. Liberals are still trying to find ways to play the globalization argument in U.S. campaigns, but it didn't work here in Oklahoma. Their "hooks" are wages/benefits and environmental issues. (Curiously, there were frequent signs the French government was monitoring the referendum through the support campaign Web site and in other ways.) But the family values messages trumped the globalization worries.
8. National conservative leaders are important to their constituencies. Jim Martin of the "60- plus" group, Bev LaHaye of Concerned Women for America, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, Don Wildmon the American Family Association and multi-issue conservative organizer Grover Norquist all helped to energize their Oklahoma people with late targeted messages.
9. Small-business people and farmers are still a key to providing credibility. Nothing the other side threw at advocates of right to work could trump the fact that supporters of a "yes" vote had chambers of commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business and the Farm Bureau working for approval.
10. In the end, the best estimate (based on tracking polls and the actual results) is that one-fourth of union households voted for SQ 695, even after they were pummeled with lies designed to appeal to working class sentiments and worries. In general elections, conservatives should be able to secure one-third or more of union households with an appeal to their moral values and world view.
Nuttle's observations, sketched here, distill the wisdom of a campaign that relied on mutual respect within a disparate coalition, and, even more fundamentally, on respect for the intelligence and good intentions of Oklahoma's voters. Newspaper advertising helped to close the deal with voters.
The manner in which he guided the most important political campaign in modern Oklahoma history speaks volumes about the kind of U.S. representative he would be, if Republicans nominate him Aug. 27 and voters elect him in November.
McGuigan is the author of The Politics of Direct Democracy: Case Studies in Popular Decision Making. This column is updated from his recent lecture at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
If any of you in other States are thinking about passing Right to Work -- Marc Nuttle is the person to talk to!
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