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**AUGUST 17, 2021**

Meyerson on TAP

Vaccination Mandates: Not Just Good Policy, Also Good Politics

As California Democrats struggle to make sure that Gov. Gavin Newsom
survives the recall ballot measure currently before voters, they have
one very potent issue they can deploy. Newsom has mandated vaccines for
health care workers and school employees, with the requirement that they
submit to weekly testing if they still shun vaccination. The Republican
most likely to become governor should Newsom be recalled, however,
right-wing talk show host Larry Elder, opposes not just vaccine mandates
but mask mandates as well.

To say that Elder's position isn't a popular one in California is to
understate. Indeed, across the country, the far-right elected officials
who oppose such mandates are now taking a beating in the polls. In
Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who's signed a new law
forbidding school districts from mandating masks for children, and tried
to ban cruise ships from requiring vaccines, has seen his approval
rating drop

from positive to negative and now trails his most likely Democratic
gubernatorial opponent when matched up against him in polling on next
year's election. The same polling shows his position forbidding
schools to mandate masks to be widely unpopular.

Nationally, a new Axios-Ipsos poll

shows that 66 percent of the public oppose the kind of state laws that
DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have signed forbidding local
officials from establishing mask mandates, with 77 percent opposing
their efforts to withhold funds from municipalities and school districts
that violate those laws by requiring masking. Public sentiment in
California is surely even more opposed to such initiatives, even as
Elder has rejected mandating both masks and vaccines.

According to The Atlantic's invaluable Ron Brownstein
,
recent polling from the COVID States Project shows that 95 percent of
vaccinated Democrats (and about 80 percent of Democrats have been
vaccinated) and 63 percent of vaccinated Republicans (about half of
Republicans have been vaccinated) support the government requiring
people not just to mask up but to be vaccinated, too.

With public opinion increasingly tilting toward greater governmental
mandating of vaccines and masks, it's good to see many leading unions
following suit. Last week, the governing board of the American
Federation of Teachers voted unanimously to direct its locals to work
with employers on establishing the particulars of vaccine mandates.
While some unions have encountered pushback from a minority of their
members on the issue of mandating vaccines for health care, school, and
other public-sector and frontline employees, the unions' concern for
their members' and the public's health-and a growing realization
that Republicans' support for vaccine resistance is an issue that
their Democratic allies will be campaigning against-is solidifying
labor's support for mass vaccinations, a cause for which AFL-CIO
President Rich Trumka emphatically voiced his support just days before
he died.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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workers' rights. BY ROBERT KUTTNER

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