we basically see luther thing that the people could christian that does not love god because he is compelled, whether it is a free and willing demonstration of love and a free and willing pursuit of charity and living simply because you love god, not because you are compelled to love god. ..

government first. in contract negotiations unions exist on the seniority. this gives guaranteed job security to the members within the union. but it also means the school districts are forced to lay off the new hires first even if they are star performers. parents object but the unions have decided they can't accept that. the unions also want understandably very generous retirement benefits for their members. in michigan, 27% of the district budgets are going to provide pensions and health benefits. it's not hard to see where. in the state you can retire after 25 years on the job and collect full benefits so you

have a lot of teachers retiring in their 40's and 50's. but if you care about getting classroom dollars spent on the rostrum, well that is a bit of a problem in the state that's facing the tremendous budget crunch like michigan. when the legislature recently proposed raising the minimum retirement age not to 65 the social security age but to 60 the michigan education association used their pravachol plot to kill the bill. if the costs were going to be cut they wanted the cuts to come elsewhere or the one to the taxes to go up. that's what has been happening in wisconsin. in wisconsin school districts and municipalities simply didn't have the power to roll back the other benefits. so the only solution to keep them going was higher taxes. the unions were fine with that. but there wasn't until scott walker's reforms that they put vehemently the districts and municipalities and the ability to gain control of their budgets and bring the costs down and that's when we saw property-tax is all.

the government exists to serve the people. for taking the public, giving a good education, not need a list for cutting into the family take home pay. the common good has detected real review for any narrow interest work. the government unions make this impossible. think about what collective bargaining powers to. it means the people, the elected representatives have to sit down with government unions and bargain with them as equals over how we spend taxes, how does the government and be operated. unless the government unions agree, the public policy can't be enacted so if you have a district that is elected overwhelmingly like the school board members on the platform of say ending of the tenure and instead of evaluating them on the basis performance and giving promotions to the best teachers and removing ineffective teachers from the classrooms that school board doesn't have the power in our democracy to enact that platform they have to sit down with the unions and the unions say no and that's that.

the school board doesn't have the power to implement these reforms. that is undemocratic and that is something the union movement itself once recognized. i have century ago in 1959 the afl-cio executive council stated coming and i am quoting vertically, in terms of accepting the collective bargaining procedures, government workers have no right beyond the authority to finish congress, the right available to every citizen. but since then they've changed their mind most states have now given them collective bargaining powers and government and the results have been disastrous to the heritage condition today to speak about his new book shadowboxes. this book reveals how the government unions of trusted the government through serving the public good and into serving their own interests and that factor has the expertise to write this book. he is the john c. west professor of international politics of

american government at the citadel and he's a member of the council on foreign relations who is frequently testified before congress that financial regulations and other economic issues. mallory is also the senior editor of money and politics for the st..com and has written widely on economic issues for publications including "the wall street journal," forbes magazine and many national newspapers. previously, he served as chairman of the free enterprise fund, the free market tank that tickets atomic growth, lower taxes and limited government and the brittle the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a way to the supreme court. from 2007 to 2011 and chaired the economic round table for the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in 2009. please join me in welcoming mallory factor to the heritage foundation. [applause] >> thank you, so much. thank you come so much. what an honor to be here.

there are so many people to thank that helped with this book, but before i do that i want to thank heritage. the heritage people have just been outstanding. and i am just honored to have their leader and president and mr. heritage and folder over there. thank do so much for being here today. for joining in this today. also, john hilboldt. i don't know if he is here. john hilboldt set this up. what a delight. how easy it is to do this because the person like john hilboldt. but i will tell you something. i'm also intimidated a little bit to have jane here. a number of things in this book are in there because of james. we quote extensively and the work he does is important for america. i want to take a couple more seconds to thank my publishers in the audience, kate and a couple of other people that have been important to this book one in particular who is sitting over there who has been a

godsend in the amount of work he has put into it. this book is really all their book as well as our book are want to share why i wrote this book i started working on this project with my wife. why the government has grown beyond its means i've been sounding the alarm for years and spent time looking at the root causes of the excess of spending what i discovered is that shadowboxes are setting the agenda their setting the agenda in the state houses and in the city councils and on the school board's has james will put it before. it's really about the government spending too much on the government employees hiring too

many and paying too much. this is how i got to the subject of government employee unions. i explore how these government employee unions lobbied the government to increase spending on government employees, which by the way increases the income and gives them more money to spend on politics this cycle of political spending which benefits government employee unions far more than it even benefits the government employees and it drives the nation into debt and that's why explore this topic and why this book came about. coming into this room somebody said what is the shadow boss. so i'm going to take about two minutes and try to explain that to do. and what does it have to do a government employee unions? in our lives our shadow bosses are the people that we've really

worked for, the people that hold us accountable for the decisions we make in our lives. it's our fathers telling us to study harder so we will have a chance for a bright future. it's our mothers pressing us to stay out of trouble. it's our football coach is sending in plays from the sidelines. for many of us in god is our shadowbox getting a plan for action you want to take and the consequences if you don't. unfortunately, as i found writing this book, for many of our political leaders, their shadowboxes are the government employee union bosses that tell them what to do what legislation to support and when to bend to the demand of the union and contract negotiations. the shadow bosses are there to the politics and to tear them

down when they don't do things in their interest. it's shocking to me would not to people like james over here that over 20 million people work for government, and 41% of those people are represented by union. government workers are five times as unionized as private employees. only 7.6% of the private sector workers are represented by the union and far less than that are actually union members with their array of unionization interestingly enough varies by state and profession. in 20 states, less than 20% of the government employee unions are members that in 15 states, more than 50% are union members.

who are these union members, the teachers, firemen, but a government unions represent almost every type of government worker. the civilian employees in the military office workers and state and local governments, university professors graduate assistants, even zookeeper's. the government is the growth area for unions when you compare with the private sector of course, and just to give you some kind of idea this is the number that mr. shark developed. heritage. there were to enter thousand private sector union workers in the industry, 219,000.

there are 477,000 union members. almost two and a half times the entire auto industry in just the post office. what does this really mean for the national? many americans feel that we've lost control of the government and politicians a laundry answer to the american people and there's a good reason that they feel this way. a government employee unions have a huge influence over our political system, and they're driving big government spending and over regulation of our economy. in the little time we have remaining because i want to have it open for questions and answers and to give you seven of the policy concerns that we have raised in shadowboxes about unions with many more and i'm going to hit on seven of them. number one, unions' drive excessive spending on government employees. i don't know if you realize this, but the private sector unions have to make sure that

their demands are not so great that the private employer goes out of business. right? well, outrageous concessions to unions don't drive a good ride out of business, and they don't make union members lose their jobs. the government will always be in business. the union contracts will just take the government immensely bigger, more expensive, create debt and bankrupt our cities and states. and they are more burdensome on taxpayers. member to come and unions are private organizations coming and we give them special benefits and treatment from the government. it's important to realize that they are private organizations. they are not there for the public good. a government employee unions get their business directly from our government, but they are not part of the government themselves.

unions represent government employees because it's their business to represent them, not because they are working for the public good. the problem is that our government elevates one private group, a government employee unions out of proportion to anyone else. tax payers, citizens and even union members. we all know and we all believe strongly in our right to speak under the first amendment. would you agree with me? buy you don't have a right to be listened to unless you are a government employe union. when you petition the government for example you have the right to talk to the government doesn't have the right to listen to you. with collective bargaining, public officials are forced to bargain with the union to walk

away. they don't have to pardon with every other group but they have to bargain with the unions. we must never forget that unions are businesses that are run for the benefit of their members and union boss is not american workers is who they run it for. the nation is in deep trouble because of this. government unions even get subsidies from taxpayers. the american taxpayer unwittingly is paying government workers for huge amounts of time to do government work while they do union work. in the shadow boss is we put the numbers together, and according to the official government reports, federal employees spend over 3 million hours, not 2010

statistics come on officials time which means they are getting paid to work for the government but they are doing union work instead. that costs the taxpayers $137 million in salary benefits but when you put state, local, county you are looking for 23 million man hours a year. that is a direct subsidy and we are not in putting all the other subsidies like office space, giving them copiers, letting you use the funds as well as a member of the items we subsidize them with. in this time when we are cutting back teachers, workers, high unemployment, why are we spending a billion dollars a year just to subsidize the unions that take multiple billions of dollars a year.

an interesting fact we found most of you know that tsa was recently unionized. before tsa was unionized we found in the report in the homeland security, homeland security alone before tsa had 62 members of, and security full-time working on union business getting paid to do homeland security work. come right from their own notes that it's just shocking. the reason i am not revealing other agencies is because they don't reveal them. they don't talk about how many employees. nationwide that 23 million man-hours is just staggering and i am being redundant because it is just mind-boggling in our society how we do this it's called officials chaim come and it is part of the u.s. code.

by the way for those of you that want to know, it's five unsc 3171 on the federal basis. number four, unions corrupt our political process. government unions are not just bankrupting our country. they are also compromising the system of elections. government unions use the bought and paid for politicians to pass legislation granting them the unending benefits. a government employee unions like to say they get to come and i quote them, he lacked their own bosses. they actually put into power people who make decisions about their salaries, benefits, work rules. if they don't perform, guess what, they threw them out and put them into somebody else.

these unions will do anything in their power to elect politicians who will serve the interest. they will spend hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions on politics. they will send in political ground troops which they will send and include paid volunteers to get out the vote. they will form alliances with who will support a pro union agenda. money flows, my friends come from government employee unions to politicians back to the same unions in a never-ending cycle of greed and corruption. politicians know it will cycle back to them in return for the pro union votes and if they cross those unions the unions will throw them right out of office. unions reward their friends and punish their enemies very

effectively. the amount of money they can bring to bear is staggering. the unions together collect over $14 billion in dues, just the teachers' unions alone as we talk about in bosses collect $2 billion a year just in dues and again we lay out these figures in great detail. interestingly enough and a lot of their own filings, these unions spend about 20% of their income on a political lie activity which is close to the percentage that the spin on representing their members but that of a 60% on administrative overhead and some of those other issues i think if we looked into carefully we would see that a lot of it is also spend on various forms of political activity.

five, government unions are bankrupting the state's. states with the longest and strongest history of the employee unions are also the states with the worst budget crisis. a government employee unions are a major contributing factor, perhaps the major contributing factor to the state and local budgetary crises. they are bankrupting the state with outrageous salaries and overtime and outrageous pensions for government employees putting out the other spending instead of local budgets. liberals' fault in this, progressives should be agreeing with us that they are being crowded out of the programs they want as well. interestingly enough the ten states with the most debt per

capita all of them are heavily unionized and none of them have the right to work states. tax payers are fleeing the unionized states for the green and free pastures of the less unionized states. america is becoming too distinct nations, the unionized nation and the free nation. government unions promote leftism. while i was working on shadow bosses i was able to prove and suspect but never know the unions elect politicians to office. they not only get the union votes, they also get reliable left votes on a whole host of issues. our research has shown the most labour supported members of congress have an abysmal voting record on all types of votes

that matter to their members and conservatives. the vote against business, they voted against family values, against life, the vote against second amendment. we have a chart like to share with you if you are interested and will be up on www.shadowbosses.com showing the politicians and the money they spend. interestingly enough, the members don't agree with the way the union bosses spend money on these issues. the members are not even knowledgeable and in many cases it is hidden from them. in the senate spending by the government employee unions on the politics matter to refuse single one of fuss but it also matters to their members and the members do not get to see at and the unions get millions of charitable donations to other

leftist organizations. the goal is to build alliances with like-minded political groups so that they will support the unions on these issues. it's a very effective technique for them to hold it together the vast left-wing conspiracy. and finally, what is the next frontier for the unions? government unions, no question it's been the growth area. larger than the private sector members. but now they are choosing to get causing the government to contract unions are looking for new frontiers. unions have been working to organize new groups of workers who are not employees of the government or any company who receives subsidies from government. in shadowboxes we detail how the states, government employees unions have already forced home care workers including parents who care for their disabled

children and people who care for aging parents the force them into unions and the forcibly take u.s out -- dues out. but what is the next step? my friends, the next step is to expand the organizing model to the new groups of americans. the disability recipients, veterans, other groups that receive the funds and benefits such as social security recipients. already unions like the american federation of state county municipal or afscma as they are known, they do this already come and what they will do is they will lobby the government for social security and medicare. one trend is that the unions are

turning from organizations that represent the members and contract negotiations into and in grievances and to lobbying organizations. and as the nanny state, which heritage helps fight against becomese. well be easier for the government to force groups of americans to accept forced lobbying on their behalf like the force american workers to accept the forced the presentation. think about it, my friends. to 20.5 million government employees the unions are already represented 41%. they receive a form of devotee could benefit entitlement who could also be unionized with a few tweaks of the law. imagine how much more income could be generated by

representing them. i don't know if you will realize this, but every million workers is about a billion dollars of dues to the shuttle buses. a billion dollars in dues to support political the activity, to help the leftist organizations. for the past half a century, a government employee unions have been winning. the power and privilege has been ratcheted up. never down and it's been ratcheted towards the greater union power nevertheless. it's our job to reverse that pattern and restore sanity and policy to the country. thank you for being here today after hearing about shadowboxes. it has been a lot of work for us and i hope it will make some difference in helping people

understand government employee unions. thanking. [applause] >> mallory before we go to questions for the crowd of one questioned if their present government employees. what fraction of government employees actually voted for the union that speaks and reflects news for them? >> in some states under a couple% under 10% -- a lot of people get a job and the next thing they know is you have to be a member of the union. they never had the opportunity. less than 10% of union members had ever voted for a union. and when they have that opportunity like the teachers did in wisconsin, half of them drop out almost immediately.

yes, sir. >> i am unaffiliated we agree wholeheartedly with your premise. i was surprised in the course of the top you never once mentioned the d word, democrat. it shouldn't be surprising that unions pursue their self-interest. the elected officials will work with them. isn't that the case? >> i would go a step further. a lot of people would sit the democratic party has a subsidiary called unions. i believe to be the government employee unions have a subsidiary called the democratic party. if you look at that chart that i was talking about if you can find it, www.shadowbosses.com

come if you look at the chart, you'll see the top ten house and senate candidates that they contribute to are all democrats. next question, yes, sir. >> this couldn't be more timely, so i just think you've had quite an impact on what we would be doing the next few months in the discussion on this issue but let me ask you this, by the way on this issue of the parties from the federal level what you said is happening, my experience on this state level where it in springfield in illinois today for example where a lot of the success of the unions in illinois have been making as much of the republican party is the democrats but in any case let me ask you this about the state's do you see a wide variety of states and the way

the states handle this and do you go into in the book what were the successes and failures in the state's? >> thank you so much for the question. i really appreciate what you do. we think that there are 23 right to work states. they are but what is the right to work state? does it mean that you're free to petition government and sell your own labor? no. there's seven states you are not forced to under collective bargaining. there are 23 states you don't have to pay but the differential in terms of union membership between the seven states and the other 16 states that are right to work but you can be forced under collective bargaining there's 60% more union members per capita. so it is not just a matter of

right to work. it's a matter of being forced into collective bargaining. that means you don't have the right to petition your employer. you don't have the right to sell your labor freely. there are only seven states you have the right. thank you for the question. next question. >> yes, ma'am. >> those that opposed obamacare were focused on the constitutionality or the cost to employers and small businesses. i thought it was really interesting that you explored the relationship between the unions and promoting obamacare. can you describe what that will mean? >> right now there's about a million -- shares of the -- there's about a million and a half in the health care.

there are about 17 million roughly workers and health care. under obamacare will mean a lot to 21 million. just on a percentage basis the kept the same percentage and still have a lot more union members. but, with the government giving money, there will be various ways that they will be able to unionize. a good analogy is that in canada dowson's the of socialist medicare which obama is, we have 60% of unionization of health care. when the far less before before it was socialized. you'll see huge quantities. the have nothing to getting a referral of a cadillac plan. there was a smokescreen. they supported it because they know they will give more members because of that and they are

going to get a billion dollars and dues for every million members and us 21 approximately potential new members. you do the math. the numbers are staggering. next question, yes, sir. >> can you talk about the difficulties and selling this problem to the public when the unions and liberal politicians have been so good about portraying it as teachers and policemen and firefighters? can you talk about that battle? >> that is a great question. anything that you say about education is you are against children. we went over the past few decades from 18 to one.

821. but the problem is is the teachers union will allow us to get rid of that teachers. the best example of this is a new jersey and nevada teachers of the year were fired. teachers of the year were fired. why? because they were doing a great job and union rules said the rwanda to go. the bad teachers you can't get rid of. the teachers that are not doing a good job you can't get rid of if you can get rid of the bottom 10%, you can make our education system, hour k-12 education system which more effective. also, why should we be going to school 170 to 180 days a year when many other countries are doing 220 and more hours per day. why can't you do it? teachers' unions won't let you. why can't you get good physics and math teachers? because you cannot pay the same for the physics and math teacher

and that skill set is much more needed in the private sector. as you pay for physical english teacher i'm not besmirching them because for the english teachers' but in the private sector the skills but is not as in demand because they will allow you to. you can't reward the teachers with bonuses. they won't allow you to. you get paid by the number of degrees. these are union rules. these are not established for our children. they are not even established to do the best of the members. it's the best for growing the teachers' union. i love this quote from albert chancre and some people say he didn't and some say that he did but it really tells you that when they give you a feel for what this is all about, when schoolchildren start paying dues that is what we will represent.

next question yes, sir. >> david with the heritage foundation. in terms of how we can undo this, can you give a crash history of how we've gotten to this point? there are certain changes that must have been made in order to allow the government employees to unionize. >> is started with executive order. it goes way back, but the big changes executive order by jfk. i will give you a crash course on how to change this. it's simple to change it. number one coming you don't force workers to pay the dues to keep a job, period. the worker doesn't have to pay dues to keep a job because he can join the union if he wants to. but he does not have to pay the

dues to keep a job. number two, we should stop subsidizing government employee unions. very simple and we should change bill walton of it and i've been told by some of the people lot smarter than we are that are involved there's going to be the decision for coming in the house and the senate to say if you want to have people working full time to get in $14 billion a year and pay them. don't ask us to pay for them and don't ask the taxpayer to pay them to do union work. number three, checkoff. it basically means taking out money from your paycheck like to withholding tax you've got to stop doing that if someone wants to take unpaid. the government shouldn't be taking out money from people's paychecks automatically.

member for, people should have the right to be represented by a union or not represented by the union. and in 43 states that right doesn't exist. people should have the right to sell their labor and the right to petition their employer. 43 states don't give us that freedom. last, millions and millions of government workers that never voted for union should have the right to vote and i think the union fact have been advocating a bill to that effect and working hard to get that changed the should vote against having the union on a regular basis in a secret ballot. those are our five quick ideas on how to change things.

it's giving them freedom and that's what it's about freedom. next question. >> fought yes? >> i'm sorry i didn't see you. i apologize. >> i am from italy. while listening to your speech i was telling myself you are still lucky because what we have in italy concerning the activities over the -- >> we are getting there. don't worry. we are getting there. these market businessmen are very popular here.

[phone ringing] >> sorry. >> it's one of the union bosses telling you not to ask the question. [laughter] >> the u.s. trade unionist to bang. but he has a lot of problems and italy told by the trade union. >> if i look at the experience i see that they have privileges which is almost impossible to be made or even try to make a longer list of the trade union, but more or less i have heard similar things, so my question

finally as the public will win in the white house and you are saying that it somehow changed the situation within your speech. to the devotee program in the sense? >> i hope so. i hope so. >> the candidates are very good. republican candidates are very good conservatives. they believe in freedom and land values. i have not seen enough about them in terms of their beliefs in the union issues. less than 7% of the workers you are looking at a very small amount of people when you look at the total united states that the amount of power and the

amount of influence that the project into politics is astounding and they do it all from behind closed doors in great detail and the freedom of information act by the secret meetings that went on. ed the other thing about the union heads that most people don't realize is they're truly the 1%. unions talk about the 1% and about occupy wall street. they are making huge amounts of money. ninian please click over 200,000. it is just astounding they're the 1% spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on private plans being invited to all of the best defense of the white

house these are a little guys that work their way up. these are truly the one per cent that they talk to their members about. as the boilermakers union which is the private sector if they just use their logo as i did we get a lawyer for the law firm which by some strange coincidence occupies the same office address in kansas, and i was writing basically a summary of the kansas city star peace on how these guys live the life of luxury spending when they receive 400 of $500,000 a year in salary or retirement benefits. each one of these executives

have powerful lawyers and they know how to intimidate them. it's true for the public sector, too. do you know of any cases where will firms were the public-sector unions intimidate people for any reason in any context? >> i don't off the top of my head, that there are many cases that have been brought. i am not a lawyer. my wife is a lawyer and at this point i wish that she were here standing next to me. there are a number of them. just drop us a note on www.shadowbosses.com, and we will get back to you. >> next question, yes, ma'am. >> i want to thank you for mentioning us in the book actually been the largest non-unions teacher association. >> you do a great job. we mentioned you because you

deserve to be mentioned. >> thank you very much. i was wondering if you could speak on the union rank-and-file you were touching on. some of these outlandish salaries and a lot of the teachers we speak with every day as the president of the two largest teachers unions seeking $500,000 a year, they are national, that doesn't affect me. the transparency and how much do you think the actual union member, how important it is to get that type of information out because it is the union member that's getting the raw deal and a lot of work to ensure these are the benefits you are getting but i would venture to say that if the rank-and-file knew what was going on they would play a component in the system. >> you are right. thank you for all you do.

at the nea and the federation of teachers headquarters over half of the employees take over 75,000 substantially more proof. >> so, in alabama -- it's good to be a shadow box. it's good. including benefits. including benefits, expenses, the unions and hotels, a big hotel in the area in florida and in the country clubs it's just not good to be a union member particularly if you don't want to be because it is almost impossible to get out of it. and if you do get out of the union they still charged money in those 22 states that are forced dues to keep a job. you cannot be a part of the

union, and what happens then is you have to pay the union still feel very close to the and then you can't have any say what goes on in the union. so then you have to pay and still not have any say. i agree with you. yes, sir? >> can you discuss the role of pensions in the deficits in the states and cities? >> you are asking me a question that i know very well you could discuss far better than i could. but thank view. i'm at the podium, thank you for that. i can see a great job putting the numbers together. i don't have the figures at the top of my town, but we all know that that is what is bankrupting our cities and states and

counties. these pension costs are ridiculous. the scam that goes on the last three years everybody allows people to just run huge amounts of overtime so that pensions become astronomical we cannot afford to do that. the private sector is being shut out because of this. bigger bankrupting the country. we have the numbers in the book i don't know them off the top of my head like you do, but that is the problem with the state and the government there is no question about that. yes, sir. estimate the industrial unions were if not controlled certainly infiltrated heavily by the organization. the teamsters, the sherman, the operating engineers, a lot of the unions were probably almost controlled. is there any evidence that organized crime is in the private sector unions? >> not really. what they have -- they've become

very legitimate. the number of the union heads are referred to as the ivy league amigos. these are people who are highly trained. craig becker the famous lawyer of sci you that went to be on the appointee, he is a law school grad. he wasn't going at night but these are very highly trained business people. they are not traditional union members that work their way up. he was the head of the american federation of teachers and has a very strong academic background. but teaching is just a very minor part of it to get a start in the union but was never a classic teacher working her way up. these are professionals running large organizations. if you took the amount of money you take annually that the unions take at the top of the

fortune 500. if you're talking about huge mass of organizations organized crime shadow boss is in the book if there is any, and i can't go into detail because i am not sure, but the traditional unions like the teamsters are now going into the government employees because that is the growth area and they know if they're going to continue to grow and take lots of news they will have to go into representing the government employees and they're fighting over it, too. >> we have time for one more question. >> rob louis with the heritage foundation. >> congratulations on the new appointment. >> are you optimistic or positive based on the results in wisconsin and the debate that

has played out. we said we won. it's all over. the government employe union is dead but a couple months before what happened in ohio? and let me ask you something to any of you realize that they were all excluded from that. he didn't want to do battle with them. he was afraid to. the power that the unions hold and the massive amount of money that they control is mind-boggling and this battle for freedom in america has just begun. it's far from over. the shadow bosses do not want to lose their power and influence and way of life. they want to still be that 1%.

thank you so much, thank heritage. it's been fabulous. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author or bouck that you would like to see feature on book tv? send us an e-mail at book tv@c-span.org or plater act twitter.com/booktv. mix from columbus ohio cure from paul beck huji tells deval that they play in ohio politics. >> ohio has been a battleground state, highly competitive all parties strong in ohio, both parties were able to win offices in ohio. they almost go back and forth in terms of party control. there was a period after the civil war that they did go back and forth. every two years. it is a big state. it has a lot of electoral

college votes and that is important for the presidential contest. it also is one of the states that really is competitive. it can be won by either side and so you put together the big prize with the competitiveness and it means the candidates are going to be here. governor mitt romney had a bus tour just a week or two ago. president obama had a bus tour just last week. they will be back in ohio. we will see more campaign ads in ohio than people in most states will see to the point that people will be sick and tired of seeing them. columbus, the market that we are in right now had the highest degree of political life advertising two weeks ago than anyplace in the country into was june so it is really going to be a place that both candidates court and almost always have. well, particularly after the civil war it was a place that

harbored of the southern sympathizers the end of the northern sympathizers. there are a bunch of counties to the south of us that are in columbus between here and cincinnati that were counties that were called the virginia military district. after the revolutionary war the officers and revolutionary army were given land in ohio the was part of the west of course in that time. they moved out here carry in their culture in the background of the company's light voting stake they didn't bring slaves with them. in ohio. but they were sympathetic to that culture. part of ohio also has been settled from west virginia, kentucky, tennessee. both states to the south of the appellation states and there's a part of ohio that is up alisa and southeastern ohio so there were southern sympathies. there's a lot of activity during the civil war and the there's the pro conservative activity and no chaim.

the governor of ohio declared martial law. the and to the picture after the civil rights war where the politicians were going to be successful statewide. the southern sympathies and people with number sympathies. the grand army of the public which was the union army took many of its union officers from ally of. the established the republican party. so the grand army of the republic became in many ways the republican party organization. so you had strong republican organizations. you as a politician wanted to run statewide thinking i have a

tribal appeal to both groups and of course by appealing to both groups, you are also able to appear to the whole country in a way that people that were presidential candidates for many decades after the civil war came from ohio so we have a whole run of people that for presidents that were ohioans because they were able to compete in a state that sympathizers on both sides of what had become the great divide in american politics between the north and the south. ulysses grant probably is the most famous one. the one who was the head of the victorian union army. he came back here and got into politics and was a very loyal republican obviously coming elected as a republican president. there were others. william henry harrison before the civil war was a soldier here in ohio. actually in virginia but he did his soldiering in ohio and

indiana all states claimed him but he was successful partly because he was able to get out to the midwest and appeal to people on both sides of the nile politically. as you go into the 20th century william howard taft in the supreme court justice and before that the president of the united states can from cincinnati. cincinnati in some ways was a southern town because a was oriented. its trade was in the south along the ohio river the and the mississippi. it also was the home of the underground railroad so if you could get sleaves, they could get out of kentucky and across the ohio river in some ways they were safe in ohio and then they could be dispersed other places that were even safer in ohio, so he was from here. harding was from marion ohio just north of columbus. william mckinley elected president in 1986.

so a whole bunch of ohioans. james garfield, he was a short-lived president because he was assassinated in office, but you have a set of presidents who came during this period after the civil war all the way up into the 1920's and then it sort of stops and they were pulling presidents from other parts of the country afterwards. they tend to be more moderate for one thing. they don't tend to be of ideologues. that's still true for the statewide politicians there's a tendency for them to be more pragmatic and less ideological than politicians in the south. these days may be from california and may be from other states. if you are trying to compete in a general election it hopes to appeal to the voters that or swing states in ohio for the years and going back and the