Poll finds 54% of voters like idea of Ohio becoming ‘right-to-work’ state

COLUMBUS — Legislative Democrats oppose it and Republicans, still shell-shocked by the shellacking they took last November over Senate Bill 5, are afraid of it, but 54 percent of voters say they like the idea of making Ohio a “right-to-work” state, the latest Quinnipiac Poll said Tuesday.

Registered voters also like proposed laws that would increase Ohio’s highway speed limit to 70 mph and ban smoking in cars whenever young children are passengers.

“Given the assumption that the SB 5 referendum was a demonstration of union strength in Ohio, the 54 to 40 percent support for making Ohio a ‘right-to-work’ state does make one take notice,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

“In the SB 5 referendum, independent voters, who are generally the key to Ohio elections, voted with the pro-union folks to repeal the law many viewed as an effort to handicap unions,’’ he said. “The data indicates that many of those same independents who stood up for unions this past November on SB 5 are standing up to unions by backing ‘right-to-work’ legislation.”

Some of the same people who were behind last year’s successful vote thumbing Ohioans’ noses at portions of President Obama’s health care reforms are pursuing another proposed constitutional amendment that would prevent Ohioans from being forced to pay “fair share’’ or other fees to help support workplace unions they refuse to join.

This follows on the heels of passage of recent legislation in Indiana making that the first new “right to work’’ state in the Midwest and northeastern Rust Belt. The petition process in Ohio is just beginning, so it remains to be seen whether backers of the amendment can collect the roughly 386,000 signatures necessary to put the question on this November’s ballot.

At no point did a Quinnipiac Poll last year ever show voters supporting Senate Bill 5’s restrictions on the collective bargaining power of public employees.

Republican Gov. John Kasich, among those urging caution in pursuing the right to work amendment, is still upside down when it comes to his own approval numbers. But the poll of 1,421 registered Ohio voters show public opinion of his performance has improved slightly.

Just 40 percent of voters give a thumbs-up to the job he’s done a little more than a year into office compared to 46 percent who disapprove of his performance. That’s a little better than the 39 percent and 48 percent numbers, respectively, recorded in the last poll in October prior to the overwhelming defeat of the public employee collective bargaining law at the ballot box.

“When a governor’s approval rating in his own party can’t overcome the disapproval by the opposition party, and he is getting bad reviews from independent voters, it is a sign of political weakness,’’ Mr. Brown said. “The governor still has almost three years until he faces the voters, but he would certainly like to get his job approval in the mid-40s at least.

“The good news for him is that he is slightly more popularly than the legislature, which gets 48 to 35 percent disapproval,’’ he said.

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and is reportedly a contender for a vice presidential nod to help put the former Massachusetts governor over the top in battleground Ohio. But it remains to be seen how much that might help Mr. Romney, given that more than a third of Ohioans have yet to form an opinion of their new senator.

Mr. Portman has a job approval rating of 42 percent compared to a disapproval number of 25 percent. That means more that 34 percent haven’t made up their minds yet.

The poll, at a glance shows:

• By a margin of 55 to 41 percent, voters like proposed legislation that would ban smoking in cars if a child under the age of 6 is present.
• Fifty-three percent of voters like the idea of raising the current highway speed limit from 65 to 70 mph while 13 percent want to drive even faster. Thirty-one percent would prefer to reduce the current limit.
• By a margin of 49 percent to 40 percent, voters oppose the idea of preventing schools from opening before Labor Day and closing after Memorial Day.