Minimum Wage Issue a Winner for Democrats

Minimum Wage Shows That We Are The Party Of Workers

The Democratic National Committee will meet in February to choose a new party chairman. [el - Go Dean.]There is more jockeying than usual, with debates about whether the party should move left or right, hawk or dove, spiritual or secular, populist or what.

Here's an instructive story you (and many national Democratic leaders) may have missed:

President Bush carried Florida handily last November. But there was something else on the Florida ballot that got little national attention -- an initiative to raise the state minimum wage to $6.15 an hour.

The initiative was put on the ballot by the community organizing group ACORN and a coalition of unions, MoveOn, and others with 975,000 signatures. The minimum wage initiative was opposed by nearly all Republicans and business groups.

Not only did the initiative win by a stunning 72 to 28 percent; it won in every single Florida county, even rock-ribbed Bush territory.

The Kerry campaign, hooked to a relentless message that the candidate had to identify with "the middle class," rejected overtures from the organizers and did not get involved. If Kerry had vigorously championed this campaign, the outcome in Florida and nationally might have been different.