KENTUCKY: LOST JOBS NO WORRY
Byline: Joyce Barrett
RUSSELLVILLE, Ky. — Voter apathy over trade issues in this year’s electioneering is well illustrated in this rural stretch of Kentucky, which just over the last weekend drew a bevy of office-seekers to its annual Tobacco Festival.
Seeking to capitalize on a declining textile and apparel industry, organized labor has put Kentucky high on its list of “must-win” states in its national campaign to return Bill Clinton to the White House and attain a Democratic majority on Capitol Hill.
Yet despite an 8 percent statewide decline in textile and apparel employment in the past year, down to a total of 35,800 jobs in August, and a recent announcement by Fruit of the Loom that it plans to lay off 800 workers in two plants at nearby communities, Campbellsville and Jamestown, trade is not resonating as a political issue here.
“There is some concern about these jobs that are lost,” said Marcus Muth, a part-time potter and a 20-year veteran of Fruit of the Loom in Bowling Green, Ky. “But apparel jobs are such a small part of the economy here that not many people have noticed they are disappearing. When people around here lose jobs, they just go get new ones.”
Muth sold his blue and green pottery at Saturday’s Logan County Tobacco Festival. He is a registered Democrat, who says matter-of-factly that Republican Bob Dole is his choice for president. He also plans to vote again for Republican incumbent Sen. Mitch McConnell, who is being challenged by Democrat Steve Beshear, a former state official who served in the state’s House and also as attorney general and lieutenant governor. Muth is still undecided about the House race, which is shaping up to be a tough one. Democratic challenger Dennis Null, a small-town labor attorney from Mayfield, Ky., staunchly backed by organized labor, is vying to unseat Republican freshman Ed Whitfield in the race for the First District House seat, which stretches from western to south central Kentucky.
McConnell, Beshear, Whitfield and Null all campaigned at the Tobacco Festival, which is one of the biggest events of the year in this area. Thousands thronged along Main Street Russellville to watch cheerleaders, cement mixers, marching bands, beauty queens in pick-up trucks and politicians parade by.
Kentucky’s economy is strong. Its overall unemployment rate of 4.1 percent in August was at a 19-year low, helped by gains in such areas as industrial equipment manufacturing and heavy construction. That compares with the national unemployment rate of 5.2 percent, which is at a seven-year low. Kentucky has become a battleground state for the White House, which must win the First District to win the state’s eight electoral votes. The presidential campaign is making tracks all across the Bluegrass State.
President Clinton, hoping for a repeat victory in the state next month, spoke in Louisville last Thursday night.
Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp floated up the Tennessee River to a ship repair yard last Friday in Paducah to carry the GOP message advocating a 15 percent tax cut and less government regulation.
“It’s not that too many people are doing poorly around here,” Kemp told the enthusiastic crowd of about 500 sandwiched between two warehouses on the dusty banks of the river. “It’s that too many aren’t doing well enough…The only thing the Democrats have to offer is fear itself. Fear to young people, fear to seniors, fear to industries and jobs.”
As part of its national $35 million media and voter-education campaign targeting 135 House races, organized labor is strongly backing Democrats Null and Beshear. Null has received $70,100 from a variety of unions under the AFL-CIO banner, including $1,000 from UNITE, according to Federal Election Commission reports through the end of June. Null also is benefiting from radio and TV ads being run in his district by the AFL-CIO that criticize Whitfield for his vote against a minimum wage hike, his vote for the Republican budget cuts, proposed cuts in Medicare and pension fund changes.
Political handouts link Whitfield to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R., Ga.). With 37,090 union members in Kentucky’s First District, the unions have a strong base.
Incumbent Whitfield, on the other hand, has received no labor money, but has been given $2,500 by Fruit of the Loom, a major employer in his district. Whitfield’s war chest at $516,814 is far larger than Null’s, who had $14,370 in the bank at the end of June, according to the FEC.
McConnell also has not gotten any financial support from organized labor, but has gotten $500 from Fruit of the Loom, $2,000 from the American Textile Manufacturers Institute’s political action committee, $1,000 from DuPont’s PAC, $1,000 from the PAC of Hoechst Celanese; $500 from Royal Knitting Mills’ PAC, and $500 from Hancock Fabrics, based in Paducah.
McConnell’s fund-raising far outpaces that of Beshear’s. According to the Federal Election Commission, McConnell had $1.5 million in the bank at the end of June, compared with Beshear who had $648,101.
Beshear has so far received $41,200 from organized labor, according to FEC reports.
The candidates all agree that the main concerns they’re hearing from votes revolve around Medicare and education. Yet, they all have strong opinions on trade.
Null said he opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement and that if elected, he would work to scale back the pact next Congress.
“It is killing the people of this district,” he said. “Everywhere you go, you see lost jobs.”
Whitfield, who was elected to Congress in the Republican tide in 1994, was not in Congress for the NAFTA vote. He said he is ambivalent over the agreement because agriculture is profiting from exports to Mexico while textiles have been harmed.
“We need to negotiate trade agreements by industry sector and not across the board,” Whitfield said. “But the fact of the matter is we live in a global economy.”
Whitfield pointed to a bill aimed at opening markets abroad to domestic textile exports as a solution to some of the problems caused by recent free trade agreements, including the GATT Uruguay Round. He is co-sponsor of the measure drafted by Rep. John Spratt (D., S.C.), a former chairman of the House Textile Caucus.
Trade is an issue in Beshear’s campaign, and he is criticizing McConnell for his NAFTA vote. “NAFTA already has cost Kentuckians over 4,000 jobs,” Beshear said. “I feel very strongly that we ought to be looking out for American jobs first and Mexican jobs second.”
Beshear calls himself a free-trader, but insists that trade agreements should improve child labor standards and protect the environment and worker safety standards. “NAFTA and other such trade agreements have put our small businesses and American workers at a disadvantage,” Beshear said. “NAFTA was not the smart way to expand trade. It is unnecessarily costing us a number of jobs.”
Noting that Fruit of the Loom has announced that 800 jobs will disappear in the near future, Beshear said, “They have not formally said where these job are going, but there is no question where these jobs are going. They are going overseas someplace.”
(At an investment conference in New York last week, Richard Lappin, Fruit of the Loom president, noted that the company expects to have 70 percent of its production done offshore by next June, compared with nearly 57 percent this year. In a massive restructuring announced in October 1995, the firm said it would cut its U.S. work force by 12 percent, or 3,240 jobs.)
Meanwhile, Jim Basham, a registered Republican who also plans to vote for Dole, stood outside Republican headquarters on Main Street Russellville after the festival parade and reflected on the voter mood. He said that western Kentucky is predominantly conservative and that Democrat and Republican labels don’t mean much around there. An accountant for 31 years at a local die-casting plant, Basham acknowledged that manufacturing jobs are leaving the area and heading to Mexico since NAFTA took effect almost three years ago.
“But most people don’t know enough about NAFTA and GATT to be for or against them,” he said.
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