The latest union snub for Harris and Walz underscores a bigger problem
for their campaign
Even with a union member on the presidential ticket, Democrats are
struggling to hold back a changing cultural tide.
By MEREDITH LEE HILL
10/08/2024 06:16 PM EDT
It was a viral moment for a campaign that needed one: A chorus of boos
greeting JD Vance as he spoke to a roomful of union firefighters in Boston,
the same group that had warmly greeted Tim Walz a day earlier.
But it was a fleeting moment for Walz and Kamala Harris. Despite the
reception at the August convention, the International Association of Fire
Fighters last week declined to endorse either candidate in the presidential
race — a snub of the Walz-Harris campaign that underscores a much
larger problem for the ticket. The move completely blindsided the vice
president’s team.
Harris and Walz, despite their longtime labor ties, are struggling to win
over key rank-and-file union members — part of a major political
realignment away from the Democratic Party.
Democrats’ waning influence with unions, especially industrial, male-
heavy groups like the firefighters and Teamsters, has been a major point
of concern for Democrats since Harris took over the ticket from Biden,
who was widely hailed by union leaders as a staunch ally of organized
labor.
To fill that void, Harris, who has a strong pro-labor record but few
personal ties to the country’s unions, has leaned heavily on Walz to help
bolster the ticket’s labor appeal. On the campaign trail, the governor
frequently talks up Harris’ role in the “most pro-union U.S. administration
in history” under Biden.
Vance repeatedly booed at union event in Boston
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In addition to the UAW, Harris and Walz are backed by the influential
International Brotherhood of Electric workers. And, when Biden dropped
out of the presidential race on July 21, the governor was on the phone
with top labor leaders less than 72 hours later, including the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees President Lee
Saunders, to get their read on his future prospects. Walz later addressed
the group’s national convention as Harris’ running mate and helped to
secure the support of the International Association of Machinists and
Aerospace Workers.
But even Walz, with his strong union credentials, is facing his own
skeptics among working-class men. In interviews, many blue-collar, male
voters who aren’t enthused about Trump don’t often appear to be strongly
swayed by Walz’s folksy charm.
Harris-Walz campaign aides downplayed Walz’s role in the non-
endorsement, saying he wasn’t part of the official negotiations with the
union over a possible endorsement.
“While Donald Trump tried to cut funding that keeps firefighters and
communities safe, Vice President Harris has always stood with firefighters
and always will,” Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said.
Harris’ team is still hoping to secure endorsements from local firefighter
union chapters, especially in key swing states, in a similar effort that
followed the Teamsters snub last month. Minnesota firefighters did roll
out their endorsement for Harris and Walz shortly after the IAFF vote last
week.
But earning wide support from firefighters in swing states won’t be easy
for Democrats, who must now contend with union members who overtly
support Trump, and who are willing to push their leadership away from
Harris.
Case in point: In the weeks leading up to the firefighters’ union declining
to endorse, union officials were telling Walz allies, Harris aides and other
Democrats that their support was essentially locked in, according to five
union officials and the three other people familiar with the matter. But at
least a week before the vote, union officials knew the endorsement was
slipping away from Harris, or likely already gone.
But the union president, Edward Kelly, was under intense pressure by key
local chapters — including New York, Boston, Philadelphia and some
officials in Los Angeles and Houston, along with a swath of rank-and-file
members — to withhold endorsing Harris, with some threatening to pull
out of the larger union if it did. Some chapters followed through on threats
to leave the union after it endorsed John Kerry in 2004, and the IAFF
declined to endorse in 2016. The pressure this year was even higher.
Several union officials said they believed Kelly, who enraged key factions
of the union in 2020 when he gave the IAFF endorsement to Biden without
more input from members, ultimately didn’t want to endorse a candidate
this cycle with the organization so politically divided.
While union officials thought the IAFF board had the votes to endorse
Harris earlier in September, and a plan to vote around Sept. 21, on Sept.
30, the union’s new board members (who had been elected in August)
took office — including a more pro-Trump official who replaced an
outgoing pro-Harris official representing Texas and Oklahoma, according
to three other union officials who were directly involved in the
conversations. It was just enough to push the endorsement out of reach
for Harris. Three days later, Kelly announced the union, by a razor-thin
margin, voted to not endorse any presidential candidate.
“This decision, which we took very seriously, is the best way to preserve
and strengthen our unity,” Kelly said in a statement shortly after the vote.
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During the closed-door vote last week, Frank Lima, the No. 2 IAFF leader
who hails from California and knows Harris well, made the motion for the
board to endorse the vice president and Walz, according to four union
officials familiar with the meeting. But anti-Harris board members banded
together to swing the results against her, including some who had argued
against endorsing the vice president over her border policies that they
argued were allowing fentanyl into the country and making firefighters
unsafe on the job. So while she won a voice vote, she lost the final,
binding vote by 1.2 percentage points. “It’s like winning the popular vote
but losing the electoral college,” remarked one of the union officials, who
was present for the board vote.
The IAFF declined to comment beyond Kelly’s initial statement on the
vote.
Harris and Walz’s strong pro-labor record appears to have limited sway
over firefighter endorsement discussions at the state level, too.
In Pennsylvania, a must-win state for Harris, the state firefighters’ union
has already decided not to issue its own presidential endorsement. Robert
Brooks, who leads the group, said it has “never made an endorsement in a
Presidential race” and “will continue with that practice and rely on the
International Association of Firefighters to handle that.” Brooks also didn’t
think any locals in his state would make their own endorsement.
In Michigan, another key swing state, the firefighters’ union is still holding
internal meetings to decide whether they want to issue their own
endorsement. Matt Sahr, who heads the state union, attended Harris’
campaign event at a firehouse outside Detroit last Friday and spoke one-
on-one with the vice president about firefighter policy issues after her
speech.
Liz Cheney rallies with Harris: 'We must defeat Donald Trump'
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“We’re still trying to navigate through it, and we recognize that we have a
diverse membership with diverse opinions, but one thing we stand firm on
is that we support candidates who we think are best for labor,” Sahr said
in an interview. “As a union, we don’t get involved in the social issues, we
stick to the labor issues.”
In battleground Wisconsin, Mahlon Mitchell, who heads the local chapter
of the state’s firefighters union in Madison, a blue stronghold, is a IAFF
board member and voted to endorse Harris in the vote last week. Mitchell,
also a 2024 DNC delegate who ran for governor in 2018, leads the larger
Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, with 4,000 firefighters and
paramedics across the key swing state.
But the Wisconsin union under Mitchell is still soliciting feedback from
members before they can decide whether to put a presidential
endorsement to a board vote. If it does, union members in the state
expect the result to be a narrow vote to back Harris, according to three
state-level union members familiar with the matter, who were granted
anonymity to discuss private conversations.
But, other members are hesitant to start a fight over endorsements.
“The [union] board needs to sit and have a discussion on it, to weigh out
the pros and cons,” said one person familiar with the internal
conversations, who was also granted anonymity to discuss them candidly.
The person noted the rank-and-file in the state skews Republican, “even
though the labor leaders typically align more Democratic.”
In an interview, Mitchell said he hadn’t pressed his state board or any
locals to endorse Harris, but confirmed: “I voted to support Vice President
Harris for the simple fact that she’s — in my opinion — going to be the
best for our jobs.”
“We’re going to work through our process and see what comes out of
that,” he added.
Jim Hoffa, the former longtime Teamsters president, said in an interview
he believed the group’s non-endorsement was “a big mistake” and
displayed “a lack of leadership.”
While local chapters have endorsed Harris and Walz, the powerhouse,
nationally-coordinated GOTV campaign that normally goes along with a
full union endorsement could have been a major asset in key swing
states,” Hoffa said.
“That is a loss for the Harris-Walz ticket.”
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