Union Rights Issue Driving Wis. Recall Elections

Sen. Dave Hansen, a Green Bay, Wis., Democrat, leans in to kiss his wife, Jane, during a victory party on July 19. Sen. Hansen survived a recall election that gave voters the most direct opportunity yet to react to a Republican-backed law that stripped most public workers of their collective bargaining rights. Eight other recall elections were scheduled for either Aug. 9 or Aug. 16, with Democrats hoping to wrest control of the state Senate from Republicans.

—Corey Wilson/The Green Bay Press-Gazette/AP

By Sean Cavanagh

In Wisconsin and Ohio, battles over the collective bargaining rights of teachers and other public workers have been debated in legislative chambers, and in the streets. Now those fights are playing out on the campaign trail.

Wisconsin this month is hosting eight recall elections of lawmakers who are being challenged in large part based on whether they supported or opposed a controversial new law that limits collective bargaining. In Ohio, opponents of a similar law were successful in gathering enough signatures to place an item to repeal the measure on the ballot in November.

Those fights are just two of the most prominent examples of the political aftershocks being felt in states that made sweeping and sharply contested changes in education policy earlier this year. Opponents of those policies are pursuing different strategies to try to do away with them, or prevent them from taking effect. In some cases, partisans on either side are looking to exact political retribution on elected officials who supported those laws, or...