A state legislature going after teachers and their unions is nothing new or special this year, but Tennessee's legislature did a particularly extreme job of it: they eliminated collective bargaining rights for teachers, lengthened the amount of time before teachers can earn tenure,prohibited teachers' unions from using member dues for political contributions or lobbying state legislators. To cap it, at the same time Tennessee passed a law allowing corporations to contribute directly to political campaigns.

The legislature's attacks on teachers don't appear to be going over particularly well, though. A recent Vanderbilt University poll found that:

59% of Tennesseans oppose the elimination of collective bargaining for teachers, while 32% support it.

"Slightly more than half" oppose the increased time to tenure, while 36% support it.

In January, the state legislature had the approval of 65.6% of those polled; that number has dropped to 45.8%. Support for the legislature fell equally among Republicans, Democrats and independents. All three groups approved of the legislature in January, but now only Republicans say lawmakers are going a good job. Disapproval has risen only slightly, from 26% to 29%.

With no other new law drawing as much disapproval, the Tennessean sees the attacks on teachers driving that decline in approval.

(Apologies for the unorthodox presentation of polling numbers; the available write-ups of this poll weren't designed for polling enthusiasts.)

Bear in mind that this is not New Jersey or Wisconsin. This is Tennessee. Attacks on unions aren't supposed to be such a big problem there, and the fact that these measures are so unpopular there could be a sign of the limitations of teachers as a favored boogeyman of the right. On the other hand, precisely because it is Tennessee, it's relatively unlikely that this kind of dissatisfaction will end up driving real electoral shifts as it might in other states.