...Or Maybe He Did

ANOTHER UPDATE: See below.

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Last night I reported on an e-mail I received from the Roy Herron campaign, indicating that he had voted for a bill urging the Tennessee congressional delegation to vote against the Employee Free Choice Act in error. It appeared that contrary to earlier reports, he had not dissed labor.

Or maybe he did.

There are new details this morning about what exactly happened. It came out last night after I had gone to sleep that Herron had in fact voted for the bill in committee, so he couldn't have made the same mistake twice.

This morning, in an attempt at damage control, Herron contacted Sean Braisted to give a further explanation of what had happened. He voted for it in committee without really understanding what it meant, then decided to vote against in the full Senate after speaking with his friends in labor, but then made a mistake, and now the vote will be changed from an "Aye" to a "Not Voting".

So now there are two problems, as I see it. First, the general point about 21st-century political campaigns and new media. If you make a mistake, it will be noticed. After you make a mistake, you have one chance to get your story right. If you flub that, it makes you look desperate and disorganized at the very least. The story--the WHOLE story--should have come out last night. I know the "flack" in question personally, and I know she would not have purposefully omitted anything or told us any less than everything she knew. So the campaign needed to get the WHOLE story out in that email, otherwise it looks like they were just hoping no one would notice that vote in committee. It looks sloppy, at best.

But the larger point that bothers me is the statement that Herron is "not fully informed on the issue of the Employee Free Choice Act, and hopes to investigate the matter in the future to have a better understanding of it." Isn't that kind of important? You're only running to be Governor of an entire state, and EFCA is only the largest overhaul of federal labor laws since the New Deal. This is something you had better understand, and understand well, if you're running for statewide office. It's not like being in the state legislature, where you can just remind everyone that you wrote a book and hope that impresses.

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UPDATE: I just got a phone call from Roy Herron himself. He reiterated his support for labor, and affirmed the need to focus on the budget now, where Democrats need to stand tough against the Republican attempts to cut funding for those with mental illness.

Agreed. But let's all pay attention when that vote comes up!