In 2004, I spent part of the summer in the Tampa area of Florida, organizing a voter registration drive. I was amazed by how many Floridians would tell perfect strangers that they were felons and could not vote. Later on, I moved up to Pennsylvania and organized Montgomery County for the dreaded ACORN. But I kept an eye on Florida on election night. We lost the presidential race, and we lost in the Tampa area, too. I didn’t like seeing that. What really leaped out at me, however, were the results of a proposed constitutional amendment to peg the state’s minimum wage to the federal inflation estimate. Even as Dubya was beating Kerry by 400,000, the very same voters voted (71%-29%) for the amendment with a margin of over 3 million. Roughly 1.2 million Bush voters also voted to raise the minimum wage.
I learned from that. Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA), Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) did not.
They should have learned that raising the minimum wage is wildly popular even among a significant percentage of conservatives in Southern states. Even today, the minimum wage in Florida is only $7.93, which is a fourteen cent (2%) raise over last year that will give a 40-hour worker an extra $5.60 a week.
Politically, no matter what kind of ads the Republicans run, there is no reason to oppose a minimum wage hike. Maybe you might not like the policy, or you could be totally beholden to corporations like Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware. But anyone who is forcing Harry Reid to stall on this issue out of fear? That person deserves to lose their seat. They are too stupid to keep it.
