Yes, really: Newsom’s new vineyard announced on same day he says he can’t help farmworkers

Remember when Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin opposed his own bill — one he had previously co-sponsored — on voting rights, all the while claiming to strongly support voting rights?

I was reminded of that painful episode on Friday when I heard how many concessions the United Farm Workers have already made to California Gov. Gavin Newsom in trying to get him to sign a bill that would make it easier for farmworkers to vote to unionize.

Newsom says that as much as he’d love to, he just can’t support the bill in its current form. But at this point, Newsom would be nixing his own language, framework and model, as well as once again disrespecting his own supporters, if he vetoed AB2183.

Since this couldn’t possibly be because the winery Newsom co-founded just bought a big Napa vineyard for $14.5 million, how puzzling, right?

The UFW has “accepted 90% of the governor’s proposals” for amending the bill already, Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with César Chávez in 1962, told me in an interview at the Capitol on Friday, after the final leg of the union’s 335-mile “March for the Governor’s Signature” from Delano to Sacramento.

With the two sides now “inches apart, in my heart, I feel he will sign,” said 92-year-old Huerta. Because “he’s not a bad guy,” she went on, smiling. “He’s not a Ronald Reagan.” Though really, “signing the bill is minimal. Jerry Brown brought the growers and farmworkers together” initially, in the ‘70s, which is why it was Chávez who placed Brown’s name into nomination for president at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. “Gavin wants to be president, so he can go a step further and recognize that these are the people who are making California rich” and yet still are underpaid and ill treated.

Ronald Reagan, Newsom is not. But whether the governor is negotiating in good faith isn’t at all clear to me.

As amended to answer Newsom’s objections, “90% of the bill is what he outlined,” Giev Kashkooli, the political and legislative director for the UFW, told me. “It quotes from his outline. But the problem with his last 10% is that it will make the other 90 not work.”

Is that the whole point of the exercise?

Here’s what the union already agreed to:

Newsom wanted all ballots to give farmworkers voting in elections on whether or not to unionize the simple, singular choice between a yes or a no. Done.

He wanted the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board to handle and mail all ballots. OK.

He wanted each and every worker to receive a ballot directly from the ALRB, and nobody else. Fine.

“We accepted all of these,” Kashkooli said.

The sticking point, though, is that he also wants employers to know exactly when ballots will be going out from the very beginning of the process. And that’s a problem, given their documented history of intimidating and even deporting workers who are known to support the union.

Employers will eventually know when an election will be held, of course, and they might even know it from the beginning. Employers who’ve signed up for a “labor peace process” definitely know an election is a possibility, and they’re informed as soon as 51% of their workers have asked for a ballot.

But telling employers from the outset when to coordinate with ICE — yes, this happens — would rob workers of even a fighting chance to organize.

“I’ve never been in a negotiation,” Kashkooli said, “where you give somebody 90% of what they want, and they still say no.”

Newsom sounds way too much like Donald Trump when he talks about “election integrity.” If mail-in ballots are so risky, why is he sending them to every Californian? And let’s not forget: If the union is found to have cheated in any way, it automatically forfeits the election.

Marching from Southside Park to the Capitol on Friday, alongside babies in strollers and senior activists, construction workers stopped their work to cheer, and chanting supporters carried handmade signs that said, “Respect my people,” and “Unions for all,” and, my personal favorite, “We feed you, Newsom.” Will the commitment that it took to march across California in the August heat matter?

I can’t say. But the hubris that it takes to say you don’t see any way to help farmworkers on the same day that your acquisition of a vineyard is announced makes me think that maybe Gavin Newsom does have what it takes to run for president. And no, that is not a compliment.

This story was originally published August 27, 2022 at 5:00 AM.