Robert Byrd is spinning in his grave.
Via Daily Signal:
At the end of a long political road, West Virginia may have arrived at the place conservatives think the Mountain State belongs. The Republican-controlled legislature has sent a right-to-work bill to the desk of Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat.
The governor has promised to block the legislation. But Republicans say they’re already lining up the votes to overcome that veto. And, barring any unforeseen developments, West Virginia soon will become the 26th state to adopt a right-to-work law.
Long a bastion of organized labor, West Virginia has remained a blue state for most of the 20th century, voting in presidential elections for Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and against Republican George H.W. Bush in 1988. But its place on the political spectrum may have shifted significantly.
The Obama administration’s regulatory “war on coal” created casualties in the fossil-fuel dependent state and an opportunity for Republicans in 2014. During state elections that year, “it seemed like everyone was running against Obama,” Mike Plante, a longtime Democrat strategist based in Charleston, W.Va.,told The Daily Signal.
The Grand Old Party won big, taking control of the state legislature for the first time in 83 years. At the top of the Republican agenda: bringing West Virginia in line with the rest of the South on the right to work.
More than half of the states in the country have adopted right-to-work laws. And almost every state in the South is doing it. Currently, Kentucky and West Virginia are the only states holding out.
The legislation advanced out of the state Senate by a party-line vote, 17-16. The House last week followed suit, approving the measure 54-46. Tomblin has until Thursday to veto the bill.