The best and worst of Ed Achorn

As I've written before, I think the ProJo's Ed Achorn writes a very good column. While N4N might not agree with everything he says, his writing is clean and elegant, imbued with a knowledge of history (and a love of baseball), and his weekly Tuesday piece is generally pointed and provocative -- qualities that are highly desirable in opinion writing.

And I can totally get with the view that a more competitive two-party system would be good for Rhode Island. As Achorn wrote this week:  

Needless to say, competitive elections would be great news. One-party dominance in any system is bad for the public. Nothing sharpens a politician’s focus on the common good, and diverts his gaze from the blandishments of special interests, more than a tough re-election battle. Real elections, with a real chance of shifting power, are the ultimate ethics reform.

But Rhode Island will never get healthier unless good people run for office, from both parties. There is no better time than now to give it a try. Operation Clean Government (ocgri.com) is planning a nonpartisan candidates’ school for April 12 in North Kingstown, to help citizens master all the details of running for public office. Candidates must file papers by the third week in June to get on the ballot.

A challenge even by a political unknown with little chance of winning does much good. It means an incumbent no longer has the luxury of running unopposed.

Yet as I've noted before, some of Achorn's embellishments strike his critics as less than fair:

One union leader calls Achorn’s invective one-sided and highly selective: "He’s extremely anti-labor, at least in terms of public employees. He also engages in a certain amount of name-calling, like referring to [RI AFL-CIO president Frank] Montanaro as ‘Boss Montanaro.’ Referring to labor leaders as union bosses is the equivalent of using ethnic slurs. You don’t see them referring to [retired industrialist] Henry Sharpe as a robber baron. They don’t refer to lawyers as shysters, so why are they calling a labor leader a union boss?"

So it's not especially surprising that one of the rhetorical bits in Achorn's column this week has inspired a sharp response from the executive director of the National Education Association Rhode Island, who is also the secretary-treasurer of Working Rhode Island.

Sent: Tue 4/1/2008 7:27 PM

To: letters@projo.com; rwhitcomb@projo.com

Subject: Letter to the editor

 

 

Journal editorial columnist Edward Achorn’s bias against public employee unions is well known in Rhode Island.  This time, however, he has gone well beyond the bounds of propriety.  His statement that unions have “storm troopers” to do their electoral bidding (“The only thing to fear is apathy itself”, Tuesday, April 1, 2008) would make the propagandists from the regime he attempts to evoke proud.  The Journal should be embarrassed and ashamed that a member of its editorial board, and an editor of these pages, equated Nazi soldiers with union members, and should apologize immediately.   Your readers, and all union members, should expect no less.

 

Robert A. Walsh, Jr.