After The Daily Caller reported that former Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra, currently the frontrunner for the state’s Republican nomination for Senate, opposed all Right to Work legislative efforts, at federal and state levels, the candidate changed his position: he now supports a national Right to Work law.
Hoekstra took heat from at least one of his primary opponents after presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann, a leading co-sponsor of Right to Work legislation in the House, endorsed him without publicly challenging his pro-union stance.
TheDC previously reported that Hoekstra and Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. struck up a relationship over the past decade or so. The Teamsters endorsed and supported Hoekstra in Congress and in his failed 2010 bid for governor of Michigan because the Republican agreed to oppose Right to Work laws in Michigan and nationally.
Also, while in Congress, Hoekstra championed attempts to open up Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to oil drilling, a cause friendly to Hoffa and the Teamsters because it would create more union jobs. (RELATED: Bachmann: Anti-right-to-work Senate candidate a ‘real conservative’)
Now, following Bachmann’s endorsement and TheDC’s story pointing out the inconsistencies of the endorsement, Hoekstra has decided Right to Work is right the way to go.
“Pete Hoekstra will always fight for Michigan jobs and Michigan workers,” campaign spokesman Brian Jones said in an email to TheDC. “He has served an active role on the issues of project labor agreements, card check, and prevailing wages when decisions on these issues became a realistic and achievable solution for the Michigan workforce. If and when Right to Work rises to this level, he will support it.”
