By Collin Roth

It turns out selling your soul to the union bosses might have a price after all.

On Thursday, Media Trackers was quick to note the immense dissatisfaction among WEAC members after the teacher’s union endorsed Democratic candidate Kathleen Falk on Wednesday. A petition quickly sprang up on Change.org asking WEAC to “Reconsider the recommendation of Kathleen Falk for governor” with signers expressing their dismay about Falk’s lack of statewide appeal and outrage over what many considered was not the choice of the grassroots.

And Zack Wisniewski of the left-wing blog “Blogging Blue” expressed his curiosity at the timing of the WEAC endorsement as well as his lack of enthusiasm for the potential Democratic nominees:

I find the timing of these endorsements curious, given there’s still no set date for the recall election against Gov. Walker. It’s still reeeeeeeaaaaaalllllllyyyyy early, especially considering there are only two announced candidates, leaving me to wonder if organized labor is lining up behind Kathleen Falk in order to dissuade any other Democrats from jumping into the race.

I’m finding it really hard to get enthusiastic about the possibility that I’ll be forced to choose either Kathleen Falk or Kathleen Vinehout to be the Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

Falk further engendered dissatisfaction among progressives after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed that she pledged to union bosses that she would veto the budget if it did not restore collective bargaining. This revelation quickly induced scorn from the likes of Ed Garvey who wrote:

So what else could labor do to cool the white-hot effort to throw Walker out? Well, here is an idea: How about going forward with endorsement interviews as if we are back in the good old days when a WEAC endorsement helped on occasion? Demand, yes, demand that any Democrat looking for an endorsement must agree to veto the budget unless (sit before reading) a promise is made to restore public sector unions to their rightful place among the angels!

I am not making this up! This announcement is the equivalent of pouring ice water on the uprising.

Another left-wing blog published a piece entitled “‘Union’ pledge wrong route to take.” The author writes:

The route taken by Vinehout, to disregard commitment to such a pledge (though not necessarily ruling it out as a possibility either), is the proper and nobler approach to take. We shouldn’t restrain our candidates to behave a certain way through the use of this or any other pledge. Doing so not only restricts our lawmakers but also may alienate a large base of moderates, who don’t want any recall candidate to appear as a pawn of the unions (a misconception, to be sure, but one that isn’t easily dissuaded by the use of such pledges)…

…Citizens should make electoral judgments based upon how candidates have acted in the past and what they say they’ll work for in the future. We shouldn’t limit any recall candidate to performing their job as governor in a strict “if-then” function. Doing so will hurt Wisconsin when that time comes, and is damaging politically to our own cause now.

Perhaps the honeymoon is finally ending for Wisconsin progressives. After a year of holding hands in their hatred of Scott Walker, the realities of political infighting and the power of Big Labor in this recall effort may finally be sinking in to those who naively believed this might truly be a grassroots movement.