Labor leaders view this year’s elections – and 2024’s – with special urgency, as a goal-line stand to preserve America’s democracy
Photograph: Allison Bailey/Rex/ShutterstockPhotograph: Allison Bailey/Rex/Shutterstockany union leaders used to pooh-pooh talk about saving democracy, according t0 Shane Larson, the Communications Workers of America’s director of government affairs. All that changed after the January 6 assault on the Capitol and after many Republicans pushed to overturn Biden’s victory in several states.
Traditionally focusing on presidential and congressional races, unions this year plan to focus far more than usual on state and local races – for instance, to prevent the election of secretaries of state and election commissioners who have embraced Trump’s “big lie” and signaled they might overturn their state’s 2024 vote results if the Democratic presidential nominee is ahead.
A campaign flyer encouraging people to vote for Joe Biden is placed on a fence in Miami Gardens, Florida, in a canvassing effort organized by Unite Here in October 2020.Unite Here has broadened its effort this year, with a stepped-up focus on protecting voting rights – and democracy itself. It is already educating voters in Arizona and Georgia about how to navigate around newly enacted voter restrictions.
“There is no way that Donald Trump or the next Donald Trump or any anti-worker candidate can win the White House without winning those states,” said Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation. Many labor leaders say Democratic lawmakers have hurt their party’s cause by doing little in recent decades to stop union membership from declining – a trendand many Republicans seem eager to accelerate. Unions often help Democrats by explaining to workers which party will do more for them.
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