Anti-union ads appear in media in Oregon

Election - The ads, sponsored by a Washington, D.C., group, are sharply critical of public employees

25 Aug 2006 // Just in time for election season, Oregonians are seeing TV and newspaper ads featuring grouchy public employees this week, thanks to a new Washington, D.C., group that doesn't name its donors.

The Center for Union Facts also is running similar ads in Michigan, Montana and Nevada. Like Measure 48 on Oregon's ballot this November, those states have similar initiatives that will ask voters to cap state government spending. While the ads don't refer to those measures, they contend that public employees have wrangled expensive compensation packages.

Public employee unions criticized the ads as inflammatory and misleading.

Leslie Frane, executive director of SEIU Local 503, formerly known as the Oregon Public Employees Union, said the ads focus on stereotypes about public employees to distract people from "the devastating impact" that the spending cap would have on government services in Oregon.

The ads are "attacking public employees because we're the ones who stand up for public services," Frane said.

The Center for Union Facts twice ran full-page ads in The Oregonian and The Register-Guard in Eugene this week, after starting radio and TV commercials in areas such as Bend and Medford/Klamath Falls last week.

The ads are designed to direct people to the Center for Union Facts' Web site so they will read information displayed there, said lobbyist Rick Berman, the center's executive director.

Berman has represented the tobacco, restaurant and alcoholic beverage industries in fights against labor unions, consumer-health groups and efforts to increase the minimum wage.

His firm, Berman & Company, is known for sponsoring groups that defend his clients' interests by attacking their critics, according to the Center for Media & Democracy.

When asked if the ads were being circulated in Oregon and the other three states because of the spending-cap initiatives, he said that was one consideration.

"I know the ballot measures were one of the factors we looked at," he said. "But there was no one factor that determined where we went." He said the biggest factor was ad costs.

More of the anti-union ads may be coming.

"We'll probably spend about a million dollars," Berman said, "and then we're going to assess the impact and look forward to other places to run ads."

Berman said any additional ads would run in states other than the ones where the current ads are appearing but only in states where citizens can place issues on the ballot by collecting signatures. Twenty-four states have such an initiative process, according to the Initiative and Referendum Institute.

Frane said public-employee unions believe the ads are designed to help the spending-cap measures pass in Oregon and the other three states. "You don't pick Michigan, Montana, Nevada and Oregon by mistake."

Don McIntire, a chief petitioner for the state spending-cap initiative in Oregon, said his campaign isn't connected to the ads but he likes them. He said he first saw the union-related ads at a conference held in Chicago this month by Americans for Limited Government, which contributed $571,000 toward placing the Oregon spending-cap proposal on the Nov. 7 ballot.

"When I saw those ads, I said 'Oh good,' " McIntire said. "I had no idea they would run in Oregon, but now I'm delighted that they did."

In all, Americans for Limited Government and groups controlled by its chairman, New York City real estate investor Howie Rich, helped place spending-cap proposals on the ballot in six states this year, including the other three states where the union-related ads are running this month. Those groups contributed $1.8 million to the signature-gathering for those proposals.

Michael Flynn, director of government affairs for Berman's company, showed the Chicago conference participants the commercials now appearing in Oregon and other states.