Proud To Be a ‘Hardhat Liberal’
By Sandy Vondrasek

Rick Klovdahl, author of "Hardhat Liberal," and publisher Stephen Morris of The Public Press, in Klovdahl's shop in Braintree. (Herald / Bob Eddy) 1Sandy 1

Nowadays, left-leaning politicians "can’t run away fast enough" from the term "liberal," notes Braintree’s Rick Klovdahl.

"They’re all ‘progressives,’" he pointed out mockingly.

Klovdahl, who came of age in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, however, is proud of the values he picked up in his formative years, and pleased to call himself a liberal.

This working man, writer and Braintree School Board member has laid out his take on the political world in his first—and very funny and thought-provoking—book: "Hardhat Liberal: A Welder’s Guide to Life, Sex & International Diplomacy."

Book Signing

The book, published by a small, "on-demand" publishing company, The Public Press in Bethel, will be released Saturday, May 31, 6-8 p.m. at a reception at the Braintree Elementary School. There will be refreshments, followed by a presentation and reading of excerpts from the book.

Political essays aren’t a new venture for Klovdahl, who has done a little bit of everything in 35 years of being a "construction gypsy." About half of the 67 essays in the book were previously published in The Seattle Times, from 1999-2000, when his hometown daily published his biweekly "blue-collar liberal" column.

Blue-collar liberals may be rare, but Klovdahl makes the case that being a hardhat liberal is no contradiction in terms. In fact, he believes it is an eminently reasonable thing to be.

The truly odd thing, according to Klovdahl, is "Why do blue-collar workers vote against their own economic interests year after year?"

He plumbs that "big question" in a number of his essays, including several on how political handlers have been spinning, for decades, the "macho man" appeal of their candidates to win elections.

In another essay, Klovdahl writes about how hardworking Americans like to "poke fun at our European allies," who are painted as "old world" and effete. However, most U.S. workers don’t know that more than half of European workers belong to labor unions, as opposed to 18% here., writes Klovdahl. Nor that European workers have had better wage gains, and enjoy better benefits, than their U.S. counterparts.

"When you look at the boards of directors of European corporations," he wrote, "you see that most of them consist of roughly one third government leaders, one third corporate managers, and one third are labor leaders."

The result, Klovdahl argues, is a system that delivers benefits not just to CEOs and shareholders, but also to workers. Maybe, he suggests, the U.S has something to learn.

The Blue-Collar Vote

In an interview last week at The Herald, Klovdahl said that one of the reasons that he decided to publish his book this year is that he believes that the working-class vote will be pivotal to the next election.

An unabashed liberal and ardent supporter of Democrat candidate Barack Obama, Klovdahl is personally committed to getting out the blue-collar vote for his man.

Democrats might not be sure about how to get that vote, but Klovdahl has a plan. He wants to use his varied credentials—writer, welder, and former actor and stand-up comic (he went to college, at age 33, on a full scholarship, and has a bachelor’s degree in theater arts) to go into union halls and talk to workers.

Klovdahl has already written Obama and his political consultant, David Axelrod, to pitch the plan.

Klovdahl says he understands, why workers vote the way they do—when they do vote, which most don’t.

According to Klovdahl, many workers don’t vote "because they don’t think they make a difference, and because they think that no one cares about the economic interests of blue-collar Joe Six-Pack."

"So, they go with the white guy who talks tough and has guns," he said.

Yes, there is sex in this mostly political collection of essays. The sex is not just to sell books, nor because liberal has become something of a dirty word.

Sex—like politics, work, taxes, and death—is just part of life, Klovdahl points out in his essays, and sexual innuendo surely plays a role in our politics.

His book is available at Cover to Cover Books in Randolph, online at www.thepublicpress.com, and at other locations.

Unique Book, Unique Publisher

Rick Klovdahl knew he had a book but it took a little time to find the perfect publisher. So one day he asked Cover to Cover Books owner Jeannie Ward if she knew of a likely publisher for his collection of essays.

Ward steered him directly to Stephen Morris of Bethel and his new "nano-publishing" company, The Public Press.

"It is just for people like you," Ward told Klovdahl.

Now, Stephen Morris knows something about publishing houses. As an author, he has been published by "small and major New York publishers, and he was publisher and president of the very successful Chelsea Green Publishing Company, in White River Junction, for many years.

In short, Morris knows how "the author/publisher relationship tends to be very negative and marked by frustration on both parts."

So he came up with a new kind of company, pledging to work with authors, doing little or no editing, and using "on-demand" printing to assist selected authors in publishing their books. Instead of spending forever polishing those selected books into perfection before they ever see print, Morris counts on incorporating improvements into the books in their successive "waves" of printings.

"Nano-publishing," he says, is "publishing in microscopic scale, yet having global influence."