A wave of local and regional Teamsters union branches in battleground states rushed to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris after the national Teamsters union declared that it would not endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in nearly three decades.<\/p>\n
Teamsters regional councils \u2014 representing hundreds of thousands of members and retirees \u2014 in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and western Pennsylvania \u2014 endorsed Harris hours after Teamsters President Sean O\u2019Brien revealed Wednesday that the union would withhold its endorsement, saying, \u201cneither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union.\u201d<\/p>\n
Separately, powerful local Teamsters unions in Philadelphia; New York City; Long Beach, Calif.; and Miami \u2014 as well as the union\u2019s National Black Caucus and a group of retirees \u2014 have endorsed Harris and urged members to vote for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz have consistently demonstrated their dedication to championing the labor movement,\u201d Kevin D. Moore, president of Teamsters Joint Council 43, which represents some 245,000 members and retirees in Michigan, wrote in a letter to Harris on Wednesday, announcing the endorsement.<\/p>\n
He urged \u201call Teamsters members \u2026 to lend their support to this outstanding campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Teamsters endorsements have drawn intense scrutiny because the union has a strong presence in battleground states \u2014 and unions have an unusual ability to mobilize their memberships.<\/p>\n
Some Democratic strategists say the outpouring of local endorsements for Harris could be more important in influencing how Teamsters turn out to vote than the national union\u2019s decision to abstain. Local unions typically mobilize members directly through workplace conversations, door-knocking, leafleting and mailers.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnion members don\u2019t follow endorsements. They follow programs of political action, which are based in their workplaces and local unions,\u201d said Larry Cohen, former president of the Communications Workers of America union and a Democratic operative working on voter turnout.<\/p>\n
Still, the national union\u2019s lack of an endorsement marks a blow to the Harris campaign, some strategists said, in light of the Biden administration\u2019s many achievements for unions. It also gives former president Donald Trump and his allies new ammunition to tout union members \u2014 who traditionally lean Democrat \u2014 as among his supporters.<\/p>\n
At a rally in Uniondale, N.Y., on Wednesday night, Trump thanked O\u2019Brien and Teamsters members across the country. \u201cBecause this was a surprise,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s automatic they endorse the Democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elon Musk took to his social media platform X on Wednesday to share a post from a right-wing account with polling results of Teamsters membership that showed Trump leading Harris by a significant margin. That post said, \u201cWithout support from union members, Democrats are toast. This is major.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Teamsters released results from two internal surveys of members that they say show rank-and-file members strongly favored a Trump endorsement over one for Harris. The Teamsters reported the periods during which the polls were conducted, whether they were conducted by phone or online, and the percentages that supported Trump and Harris. But the Teamsters did not disclose how participants were selected for the surveys, the number of people who completed them, whether the samples were weighted by demographics, or the exact questions they asked.<\/p>\n
The Teamsters said these surveys influenced their decision to not endorse. However, a chorus of union leaders and political strategists questioned them and their methodologies, as no details were released. The Washington Post has also inquired about the methodologies.<\/p>\n
A national Fox News poll of registered voters conducted in mid-September found Harris with 53 percent support to Trump\u2019s 47 percent among union households, within the poll\u2019s margin of error. In 2020, Joe Biden led Trump with voters in union households by 56 to 40 percent, according to media exit polls.<\/p>\n
Steve Rosenthal, a Democratic political strategist in the labor movement for decades, said the Teamsters\u2019 non-endorsement \u201callows Trump to say, \u2018Union members support me. It\u2019s just union leaders that don\u2019t,\u2019 which isn\u2019t the case. You see lots of polls that bear that out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Teamsters have endorsed the Democratic ticket in every presidential election since 1996, when they did not endorse a candidate. The union had closer ties to the GOP decades ago, endorsing presidents Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.<\/p>\n
The Teamsters\u2019 non-endorsement also reflects a major chasm within the union. Some labor experts say O\u2019Brien has adopted a more bipartisan approach under pressure to consider the membership\u2019s diverse political leanings. He ascended to the union\u2019s top office in 2021 after running as a reform candidate who promised more member involvement in union decision-making. O\u2019Brien is also aware that many rank-and-file Teamsters are Trump supporters, experts say.<\/p>\n
The union met behind closed doors with Harris on Monday, and earlier this year with President Biden.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in January and held a roundtable with the former president at the union\u2019s headquarters. He also addressed the Republican National Convention in July, becoming the first union president to do so \u2014 outraging Democrats, who felt betrayed in light of the Biden-Harris administration\u2019s efforts to champion labor.<\/p>\n
The budding relationship with Trump also spurred backlash from liberal Teamsters leadership and many rank-and-file members. After the conventions, a growing cohort of Teamsters local unions began issuing endorsements for Harris, and in some cases condemning O\u2019Brien for not endorsing her.<\/p>\n
As of Thursday, at least eight regional councils, covering active Teamsters members in some 14 states, as well as 10 union locals, had endorsed Harris. The regional councils alone represent more than 500,000 Teamsters members.<\/p>\n
No regional or local Teamsters organizations have endorsed Trump.<\/p>\n
Scott Clement and Hannah Knowles contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A wave of local and regional Teamsters union branches in battleground states rushed to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris after the national Teamsters union declared that it would not endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in nearly three decades. Teamsters regional councils \u2014 representing hundreds of thousands of members and retirees \u2014 in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9820,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}