A union member who votes for a Republican in this fall’s presidential election is like a chicken supporting Col. Sanders, the state’s attorney general said last Friday evening.

“Anyone who votes Republican in a national race and who is a member of organized labor, or a friend of organized labor, well, that’s like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders,” Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said. “Or, it’s like a chicken company voting for Drew Edmondson — it’s not goanna’ happen and it shouldn’t happen.”

Edmondson, appearing at the Labor and Friends annual banquet Friday in Oklahoma City, delivered a fiery, partisan speech to an audience of more than 200; he praised the work of Oklahoma labor unions, urging them to “continue to work toward a better state.”

Invoking the memory of former corrections official Kate Barnard, Edmondson said Oklahoma “needs to see more heroism from its public officials.”

“Kate Barnard was a champion for the poor and downtrodden in this state,” he said. “She was terribly concerned about the conditions of working people. She was particularly concerned about those who worked in the coal mines; she was concerned that children worked in those mines.”

Barnard, Edmondson said, expressed that concern during a speech in McAlester, then a major mining community in the state.

“She made a speech in McAlester,” he said, “in the heart of the coal mining country. One of the mine owners, in an attempt to intimidate her, stood at the front of the audience in front of Kate as she made her speech — it didn’t work. She pointed to the owner and said, ‘the diamond stickpin in your tie was purchased with the blood and lives of the children and adults in Pittsburg County and we’re going to change that.”

It’s that type of attitude, he said, that Oklahoma needs more of today.

“Speaking truth to power — that’s something the labor organizations of this nation and this state have been at the forefront of for more than 100 years,” he said.

Turning to recent history, the attorney general blistered former labor commissioner Brenda Reneau for her anti-union stance.

“You can’t send out a minimum wage poster with an anti-union message stuck right in the middle of it,” he said. “Isn’t it nice to have Lloyd Fields as our labor commissioner?”

Edmondson also had tough words for President George Bush.

“The real income of workers has declined by more than $1,300 since the first year of the George Bush presidency,” he said. “And today, there are 37 million Americans living in poverty — 5.4 million more than in the year 2000. The typical American family added $14,000 in debt from 2001 to 2004, in order to meet the failed economy of the Bush administration.”

And Bush’s 2007 tax cuts “gave $119,500 in tax relief to households earning in excess of $1 million.”

Citing more statistics, Edmondson said 46.6 million Americans were without health insurance.