Next door: Org labor vs GOP

We had a story Sunday looking at labor vs the GOP in Pennsylvania this fall. The Wall St. Journal today previews the same fight next door in Ohio, which is still roiled by an overturned Republican effort to strip bargaining rights from public employees:

Last year's fight over public-employee unions was waged when Ohio's unemployment rate was around 9%. Since then, though, it has dropped to 7.5%. One political debate will be whether the Republican Gov. John Kasich—the man at the center of the union fight—or the Democratic president, Mr. Obama, gets credit if the state's jobless rate continues to fall.

Democrats think the fracas reopened the door for supporters who have slipped away in recent years: white, working-class, Republican-leaning voters who disliked the GOP move to shrink the power of public-sector unions, to which many remain loyal. During the fight last year, Mr. Obama lashed out against Ohio's collective-bargaining law and a similar law in Wisconsin.

Republicans, however, are optimistic the core debate over the size of government—including pay and pensions of public employees—will energize their base and pull financially pressed swing voters in their direction.