Rare News Desk
Montana U.S. Sen. John Walsh’s hopes – and that of the Democratic National Committee – to keep the seat he took over from Max Baucus last year went up in the big sky yesterday. The New York Times revealed Walsh had extensively plagiarized a 14-page grad school thesis he wrote while studying at the Army War College seven years ago.
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Particularly for Democrats, who hoped the former Army colonel-turned-politician could help them hold off a Republican bid to take back the Senate, the revelation that Walsh pilfered much of his thesis (including the six “recommendations,” or conclusions that the paper reached) from other reports such as one by the Carnegie Endowment for International Piece, have all but handed Baucus’s old seat to Republican Congressman Steve Daines.
It isn’t just Democrats who have gotten a black eye from Walsh’s alleged plagiarism. The nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, have given Walsh their backing. In the process of financially and politically sponsoring Walsh’s bid, the two unions are now associated with someone whose misbehavior would get him suspended or expelled if he were a grade school student.
Last December, the Montana Education Association-Montana Federation of Teachers, which is an affiliate of both unions, formally endorsed Walsh’s senate bid. Besides the fact that Walsh’s own wife works at a school in the state capital of Helena, the union has long backed Democrats over Republicans at the ballot box. Declared the union’s president, Eric Feaver: “John is well acquainted with the successes and challenges facing Montana’s public sector employees.”
MEA-MFT’s parent unions, the NEA and AFT, have also been backing Walsh’s bid. Each union’s political action committee gave $10,000 to help him keep the senate seat in Democrat hands, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Even before the two unions backed Walsh, there were questions about his integrity. Four years ago, as adjunct general of Montana’s National Guard, he was censured by the U.S. Army for using his job to cajole his lieutenants into helping him win a leadership post in an influential military association. Because of that censure, Walsh lost out on the promotion to Army major general usually granted to National Guard leaders.
Now the NEA and AFT have found themselves wasting money collected from union dues on a senator who won’t win office. And by backing Walsh, the unions are supporting a man who has apparently committed the kind of ethical violation explicitly punished by schools and institutions of higher education. Given that the NEA and AFT represent the nation’s public school teachers, the two unions should have little choice but to withhold support.
But will the NEA and AFT do so?
Staffers at MEA-MFT were unavailable for comment, while flacks at NEA’s and AFT’s national headquarters did not respond to messages your columnist sent to them. Neither AFT President Randi Weingarten – who likes to spar with yours truly whenever possible – nor her colleague at the NEA, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, yet responded to my inquiries.
For Walsh, his aspirations for a full term in the Senate are all but over. But for the NEA and AFT, the embarrassment may have only just begun.
