Former UAW Member in Tough Primary Fight in Ohio District 6

by Mike Hall, Apr 24, 2006

Charlie Wilson must be doing something right in his write-in race for Ohio’s Democratic nomination to Congress from the 6th District. He’s faced an almost $200,000 barrage of negative ads as the May 2 primary approaches.

That’s quite a smear campaign for a primary race. But you know what’s really strange? It’s not being mounted by his opponents—it’s being financed and run by the National Republican Congressional Committee to the tune of $194,000 as of early April, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The former UAW member and current state senator, Wilson appears to have struck real fear into the hearts of the GOP smear-monsters.

Wilson is a popular state legislator who has served a large part of the southeastern Ohio district for a decade in the state Senate and House. Because of a technicality, he’s been forced to a run a write-in campaign. While polls show he has a lead over two lesser-known and inexperienced Democratic challengers, winning a write-in battle is a tough hill to climb.

Apparently, Republicans are trying to knock Wilson off so in the general elections this fall, a GOP candidate will have a better chance to win in the longtime Democratic district, which has been served for 12 years by Rep. Ted Strickland (D), who now is running for Ohio governor.

As a state lawmaker, Wilson protected Ohio jobs from going overseas by backing legislation to penalize companies who shipped jobs out of the country and by sponsoring a job-training bill for workers whose jobs were exported. He has worked to protect wages by opposing repeal of the state’s prevailing wage laws and voted against anti-union measures that could hurt workers’ collective bargaining rights.

If elected to Congress, Wilson vows to “create good-paying jobs with quality benefits and oppose bad trade deals that send American jobs overseas.”

In addition, he will fight efforts to privatize Social Security and will stand up for patients against big HMOs and the insurance industry to improve the nation’s health care.

With control of the U.S. House up for grabs, according to many political observers, it would be quite a coup for the Republicans to replace Strickland—who sports a 98 percent lifetime AFL-CIO voting record—with a corporate-friendly lockstep Republican.

Wilson, who likely would match Strickland’s longtime support of working families, has won the backing of the state’s unions, including the Ohio AFL-CIO.

If you live in Ohio’s 6th District and want to help Wilson win his write-in campaign, check out his website.

If you are a union member who wants to get involved, volunteers for leafleting, phone banks, neighborhood walks and mailings are needed throughout the district. Call one of these three phone numbers and help Labor 2006 take back Ohio: 740-590-0056, 740-282-2181 or 614-397-7512.

This portion of this website is paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education - Political Contributions Committee, with voluntary contributions from union members and their families, and is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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