The biggest part of the working families’ political mobilization has always been “boots on the ground”—not ads on the airwaves. Yesterday’s primary victory in Pennsylvania for Rep. Mark Critz (D) shows just how much ground working families’ boots can cover.

Just over a year ago, the 2010 midterm elections saw Republicans seize control of both branches of the legislatures in 11 states. Then, while talking up the notion of job creation, they set about cutting their state and local public workforces with a ferocity unseen in decades.  The most recent numbers, according to the Roosevelt Institute, are stark.

The 11 states are Alabama, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Together, they eliminated 87,900 state and local public jobs—more than 40 percent of the total cut.

Pennsylvania has become the latest state to pass a voter ID law in the Republican-led nationwide effort to deny the vote to millions. H.B. 934, which Gov. Tom Corbett signed into law last Wednesday, will effectively disenfranchise 691,000 Pennsylvanians who do not currently have a driver’s license, according to a 2006 Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) estimate. African Americans, seniors, people with disabilities, the working poor and students are twice as likely as others to lack ID. Voter ID bills introduced across the country would disenfranchise more than 21 million eligible voters.

What has caused the sudden obsession over “voter fraud” that has seized Corbett and other Republican politicians all across the country?

The better question is not “what” but “who.” And for whom.

This is a cross-post from Working America’s Main Street blog.

Working America members, teachers and unemployed Pennsylvanians on both sides of the state delivered more than 1,000 handwritten postcards to Gov. Tom Corbett’s regional offices in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. We wanted Corbett to know the drastic, widespread and ultimately disastrous results of the budget cuts he enacted last year. We wanted him to make good on the rhetoric used in his first year, which called for “shared sacrifice.”

AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer sends us this report.

We are excited to introduce our new AFL-CIO Community Service Liaison for the Erie-Crawford Central Labor Council in Pennsylvania, Ron Oliver. A Steelworker for more than 20 years, Oliver has long been involved with United Steelworkers (USW) Local 3199, USW District 10, the central labor council and community services.

The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO communications team, Jim Deegan and Karen Gownley, sent us this report.