We wonder if the leaders of Connecticut's Democratic Party or their friends in organized labor learned much from the union members who voted against Chris Donovan, the congressional candidate whose campaign was more than a little tainted by corruption.

In the Aug. 14 primary, the misguided union leadership dutifully got out the vote for Donovan, the former union organizer turned speaker of the house, but the rank and file, to their credit, didn't follow along.

It was the outcome party leaders from the governor on down reportedly hoped for but couldn't summon the courage to say out loud. There was, after all, union fealty in future elections to consider, as if labor would defect to a Tom Foley and deeper cuts in the state work force and benefits in 2014.

And so, with hardly a murmur from leading Democrats, the unions supported the corruption-stained Donovan with the fervor of a super patriot shouting my country right or wrong or my mother, drunk or sober.

"We made thousands of phone calls, dropped thousands of pieces of literature and visited hundreds of work sites," AFL-CIO official Lori Pelletier told Christine Stuart of Connecticut News Junkie election night. "We did what we were supposed to do."

They did indeed. Thirteen of Donovan's top contributors were unions that each gave between $10,000 and $25,000. (The roll your own tobacco guys gave more-$27,000-but Donovan had to give it back,)

The union donors represented, or if you prefer, misrepresented electrical workers, public employees, auto workers, plumbers, pipefitters, firefighters, machinists, hospitality workers, teachers, food and commercial workers and ironworkers, most of whom stayed home or voted for someone else.

Watching a TV interview before the election, I cringed when Senate candidate Chris Murphy couldn't bring himself to criticize the Donovan campaign for taking an old Murphy statement praising Donovan's ethics and disguising it as an endorsement in the Congressional race.

Asked about the fake endorsement, Murphy acknowledged the Donovan campaign didn't have his permission but couldn't bring himself to say more of Donovan than, "I hope he's telling the truth."

Donovan went on vacation to an undisclosed location without endorsing Elizabeth Esty, the little known moderate who won the primary, or saying if he'll run on the Working Families Party line. The Kamikaze wing of the Democratic party, composed of some unions and lefty bloggers, wants Donovan to run. But State AFL-CIO President John Olsen, a onetime Donovan diehard, has warned his colleagues "there is no path toward a Working Families victory" as a third party and on Wednesday, the state union gave Esty a somewhat belated endorsement.

The rank and file's revolt wasn't that surprising. Union members I've worked with - photographers, engineers, editors - aren't the kind of men and women who would tolerate corruption. Many are parents who might not have appreciated Donovan's tampering with the governor's education reforms and as private sector workers, their sympathy for generous public employee pensions and lifetime health insurance would be restrained, to say the least.

The uprising recalls the historic revolt by union members in 1940 when John L. Lewis, the flamboyant and cantankerous head of the CIO unions of industrial workers and the United Mine Workers, decided it was time to teach Franklin D. Roosevelt a lesson.

The president, seeking his unprecedented third term, had offended Lewis when he refused to take sides in a violent steel strike and then made matters worse by proclaiming his contempt for actions by the companies and the union, proclaiming "a plague on both your houses."

In addition, Lewis, a non-communist, was allied with many communists in the CIO who objected to Roosevelt's support for the British when the Soviet Union was allied with Germany.

In a famous radio speech, the eloquent Lewis grandly announced he was taking his industrial workers and coal miners out of the Democratic Party and proclaimed they would be electing Wendell Willkie in 1940. Roosevelt won with the votes of 85 percent of the CIO and United Mine Workers.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury.