In 1958, Senate Minority Leader William Knowland, his eye on the 1960 GOP nomination coveted by fellow Californian Richard Nixon, went home and declared for governor.
Knowland's plan: Ride to victory on the back of Proposition 18, the initiative to make right-to-work the law in the Golden Land. Prop. 18 was rejected 2 to 1. Knowland's career was over, and the Republicans were decimated nationally for backing right-to-work.
Badly burned, the party for years ran away from the issue.
This history makes what happened in Michigan, cradle of the United Auto Workers, astonishing. A GOP legislature passed and Gov....








The Fall of the House of Labor