Here’s the proof the unions owned this election

If you ever had any doubts the unions owned this election, cast them aside.

Yes, the union-surrogates, otherwise know as Democrats, won the presidency, more of the House, more of the Senate, swept the Clark County Commission, gained seats in the state’s Assembly and grabbed a majority of the state Senate.

But not even that is foolproof, proof-positive. No, you need only look down ballot, past the judges and justices of the peace and the school board — where all the union backed candidates won by the way — to a single race for a seat on the Board of Regents for the state university system, where an unknown political neophyte upset a highly respected incumbent regent.

Newly elected Regent Robert Blakely (at right) had one thing incumbent Bret Whipple did not.  He had the endorsement of the AFL-CIO. (Read Richard Lake’s story in today’s Review-Journal.)

Now, it’s payback time.

Here comes the elimination of secret-ballot elections for unionization of companies.

Here comes the bailout of the UAW — and you thought it was all about the Big Three? The president of the UAW defiantly declared Saturday there will be no more concessions by labor, even though the average hourly cost of UAW workers is more than $70 an hour compared to $48 at Toyota plants in this country.

Here comes tax hikes to pay their wages.

When Gov. Jim Gibbons suggested state workers could avoid massive layoffs by taking pay cuts, his boss — Dennis Mallory, head of one of the public employee unions — called the idea “ridiculous.”

"This is a horrible idea," Mallory said. "Are we coming to the time when employees fall down hurt on the street that we will let them lie there? We are seeing the eroding of the middle class."

So while the private sector is laying off workers, cutting hours and benefits, expect the public union employees to continue getting double-digit pay raises.

After all, they own government.