Is paid sick leave a winning issue?

Hillary Rodham Clinton is clearly in the market for issues with traction. A few weeks ago, speaking at the Massachusetts Conference for Women in Boston, she seemed to have settled on one: She praised Massachusetts voters for passing a ballot measure that gives most workers the chance to earn sick days, with pay.

“We need to get paid leave provisions on every state ballot by 2016,” Clinton declared.

Massachusetts’ new law, which lets workers earn up to five sick days per year, is stronger than existing laws in California and Connecticut, and possibly the sign of a momentum shift. Not long ago, paid sick leave laws were considered a pipe dream, even in Massachusetts, where bills languished in the State House for years. But activists believe the national mood has changed, and the issue can’t be pigeonholed as a niche liberal cause.

After all, this past election wasn’t exactly a banner one for Massachusetts progressives. A Republican won the governorship. Ballot questions to expand the bottle bill and repeal the casino law failed.

Yet paid sick leave — Question 4 on the ballot — passed by a stunning margin of nearly 20 percentage points, despite scant advertising on its behalf. It drew support from a coalition of labor unions, business groups, and hospital leaders. Operatives believe voters actually searched for the issue on the ballot: a significant number of people skipped Questions 1 and 2 entirely, but cast votes on Question 4.

Now, activists think more victories are in reach, in Philadelphia, Chicago, Vermont, Oregon, and Maryland — through the ballot process or once-elusive legislative votes. In New Jersey, unions have driven a successful city-by-city effort; a recent referendum in Trenton passed by a vote of 5,308 to 881.

Those victories, along with Massachusetts’ vote, have emboldened New Jersey legislators, who are now likely to pass a sick leave bill, said Kevin Brown, New Jersey state director of SEIU local 32BJ. But he expects a veto from Governor Chris Christie, who is eyeing a 2016 presidential run. Activists think Larry Hogan, Maryland’s incoming Republican governor, would also a veto a bill if it hit his desk.

But is it clear that Republican voters wouldn’t want it? In 2014, “Democrats went up in smoke,” Brown notes. “But if you look at the ballot measures where folks are looking at the things that working people care about — minimum wage, sick days — people are voting for them across the country.”

Which means Republican governors may want to think twice about those vetoes. And that Clinton may have indeed found a crossover issue.