DETROIT — Vice President Kamala Harris is counting on union leaders to deliver her the Rust Belt as she competes with former President Donald Trump for the working-class vote.
Harris does not have the same union appeal as President Joe Biden, whose long record on labor and Scranton, Pennsylvania, roots have endeared him to white, blue-collar workers. But she will benefit from the same campaign machinery that helped propel him to the White House.
Between now and Election Day, thousands of union volunteers will door-knock, make phone calls, and attend rallies on her behalf. That’s to say nothing of the hundreds of millions in outside spending from their affiliated PACs.
The alliance seemed less certain a month ago, when the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the largest unions in the country, decided to sit out the presidential race. Trump had nearly double the support of Harris, according to a survey of its membership, leading Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to withhold an endorsement.
But the nonendorsement also sparked a backlash. Teamsters chapters in a spate of battleground states voted to support Harris anyway, in open defiance of O’Brien.
The upshot of the revolt is that labor organizing won’t look much different than four years ago. But union leaders will be turning out votes in a much different environment.
Harris, who took over the ticket from Biden in August, has a short window to introduce herself to union workers, while Trump, now running his third presidential campaign, has stepped up his populist rhetoric.
‘All in this together’
Nowhere is Trump’s outreach more evident than in Michigan, where anxiety over the transition to electric vehicles threatens Harris’s base of union support. It’s also where Trump has his strongest lead in the three “blue wall” states he cracked in 2016.
In the latest Quinnipiac University poll, Trump is ahead by 4 points in Michigan.
Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, has become the public face of union opposition to Trump. He is a fixture at campaign events for Harris, warning voters that Trump is a “scab” who would betray the labor movement in a heartbeat.
But Harris will benefit from an alphabet soup of labor unions that have committed to organize on her behalf this cycle.
In Michigan, the highest-profile endorsement came from Kevin Moore, president of the state’s Teamsters. His council, which represents 245,000 active and retired members, was among the first to break with O’Brien.
In practical terms, the support means additional resources and volunteers for mailings, robocalls, and other get-out-the-vote efforts.
“We’re throwing everything we have at the wall to do this,” Moore told the Washington Examiner during a visit to his council headquarters in Detroit. “We’re all banding together to make sure we have not one dollar left when this election is over.”
But there is also symbolic value in the endorsement. The national Teamsters, which had supported every Democratic nominee for president since 1996, dealt Harris a political black eye by sitting out the race.
By contrast, Moore welcomed her on the tarmac the next day as she arrived in Detroit for a campaign event.
“The house of labor in Michigan is together,” Moore said. “Every union in Michigan, whether you’re a building trade, whether you’re a UAW, whether you’re an AFSCME, an SEIU unit, a teachers union, we’re all in this together.”
‘Healthy debate’
Harris revived Democrats’ chances of keeping the White House when she took over the ticket, outpolling Biden in virtually every swing state. But her support from union households still lags behind Biden and, in some cases, Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee, according to recent surveys.
O’Brien reinforced that narrative in September, when his survey found Trump leading Harris 58% to 31% among Teamsters members, an almost 2-to-1 margin.
The divide has posed a challenge for union leaders, some of whom are reluctant to alienate their rank and file. The International Association of Fire Fighters, which made its own decision to stay neutral by a “margin of 1.2%” last week, described the nonendorsement as a way to “preserve and strengthen our unity.”
But on the other side of that divide are most other union leaders, who say they have an obligation to endorse the candidate they believe will best help organized labor.
Trump has not made the same commitments to labor unions as Harris, among them a promise to sign the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would expand collective bargaining rights to independent contractors.
“I lead for the best interest of the members of Teamsters in Michigan, and it’s the members that elect me to do that,” Moore said.
Moore denied that a majority of Teamsters were supporting Trump, as O’Brien had found, citing polling from his membership meetings that showed 68% in favor of Harris.
“We know our members in Michigan. We poll our members all the time,” he said.
He nonetheless acknowledged “healthy debate” within his union. The rank-and-file Teamsters, largely made up of truckers and warehouse workers, are thought to lean more conservative than some other labor groups.
“We do debate. We debate all the time. We talk about it on every issue, whether it’s a House Democrat or a House Republican, whether it’s a mayor,” he said. “The Teamsters in Michigan are in every election.”
No ‘Union Joe’
Harris has spent weeks refining a message that speaks to the working class in sweeping terms. On the economy, she talks of fighting corporate greed, while her basic message on Trump is that he’s only out to enrich himself and his “billionaire buddies.”
But on the ground, Harris’s surrogates are shading in the details for union members unfamiliar with her career. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), speaking at a UAW event in Warren, Michigan, last Friday, told members that Harris walked the picket line with striking workers in 2019.
Her tiebreaking vote in the Senate to keep union pensions solvent as part of the American Rescue Plan is also a common refrain.
LaShawn English, the UAW president for Region 1, which covers Detroit and its surrounding counties, conceded that Harris lacks the “Scranton Joe” appeal Biden built across five decades in public life.
“Of course she’s going to have ground to make up,” English told the Washington Examiner at the UAW event in Warren, pointing to the three years she spent in Biden’s shadow before running for president.
As a result, labor leaders are attempting to reshape public opinion about Trump and the perception that life was better with him in the White House.
English is trying to dent Trump’s image in concrete terms, reminding her members of the auto plant closures in Warren, Detroit, and beyond during his four years in office. In aggregate, the number of auto jobs under Trump grew slightly before the pandemic, while there has been a larger expansion nationally under Biden.
“Let’s be honest, people have short memories, but we got to remind them,” English said. “If you are a real leader, you got to remind your membership. I can’t tell you how to vote, but I can tell you why we are supporting” Harris.
Still, Harris is fighting an undercurrent that runs deeper than either candidate’s record or policy prescriptions. She is navigating anger from union workers who see the Democrats as complicit with Republicans in the outsourcing of America’s industrial base. O’Brien, the Teamsters president, encapsulated that sentiment earlier this week when he lamented to podcast host Theo Von that Democrats “f***ed us over for the last 40 years.”
Is Trump the antidote?
To some union members, Trump, known for his unfiltered rhetoric and promise to restore what he calls the lost greatness of America, is the antidote to that crisis.
“This is not just another four-year election,” said Isaiah, a 24-year-old UAW member from Dearborn who asked that his last name be kept private. “This is an election where we need to fight for the very heart and soul of the American worker.”
“President Trump is going to do just that,” he added.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Other members echoed English, convinced that Trump is a grifter who does not have much to show for his time in office.
“Hopefully, people that want to vote for Trump can realize that he’s not really for the country as a whole — he’s for himself,” said Ed Thompson, a retired UAW worker who lives in Harrison Township.
