Across the United States, the results of the Nov. 3 election could have a deep impact on the fortunes of organized labor.
Democrats will have at least 54 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate, and could have as many as 56 depending on still-to-be-finalized election outcomes in Alaska and Mississippi. In the U.S. House, it’s predicted Democrats will have 259 seats — an 83 seat majority.
Democratic party control of Congress matters to the union movement, because although there are a handful of pro-union Republican members, they don’t hold sway on labor policy when their party is in charge.
A case in point is the House Committee on Education and Labor. Since 1995, every Republican majority has stripped “labor” from the committee name, rechristening it the Committee on Education and the Workforce. More importantly, Republican leaders place anti-union Congress members in charge of the committee, like current chair Tim Walberg (R-Minnesota), who is a co-sponsor of national “right-to-work” bill that would make union dues strictly voluntary. With Democrats taking charge in January, the committee chair spot will likely go to Bobby Scott of Virginia, the most senior member, or possibly to Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon) or Jahana Hayes (D-Connecticut), both of whom have put their names forward.
Icing on the cake for labor: Four newly elected Democrats in Congress come directly out of the union movement.
- In Maine, newly elected U.S. Senator Troy Jackson is a former logger and a card-carrying member of three unions — the Machinists, Painters, and United Auto Workers.
- In Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, Brian Poindexter is a member and former organizer and apprenticeship instructor in Ironworkers Local 17.
- In Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, Bob Brooks is 20-year member of the International Association of Fire Fighters and president of the union’s state association.
- In Montana’s 1st District, Sam Forstag is a wildland firefighter for the Forest Service and vice president of Local 60 of National Federation of Federal Employees, a division of the Machinists union.
One other union candidate fell short: In Nebraska, Dan Osborn got 44% of the vote in his run as an independent against an incumbent Republican; he’s a member of Plumbers Local 464 and formerly led a strike at Kellogg’s as president of Bakers Local 50G.
Unions are also celebrating the return to the Senate of Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Widely described as a “labor lion,” Brown distinguished himself as an opponent of NAFTA-style trade deals, but lost election two years ago to crypto-backed multi-millionaire Bernie Moreno. This year Brown challenged Ohio’s other senator, Jon Husted, and won.
According to the national AFL-CIO, exit polls showed union households voted 21 points more for Democrats than Republicans nationwide.
“This blue wave was union-made,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler in a post-election press statement. “The billionaires had the money in this election, but working people had the power.”
In Oregon, all five incumbent House Democrats, all of whom were backed by labor, won re-election easily: Suzanne Bonamici, Maxine Dexter, Val Hoyle, Janelle Bynum, and Andrea Salinas. So did U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, who consistently ranks among the most pro-union voices in the U.S. Senate.
In Southwest Washington’s closely divided 3rd Congressional District, supporters of incumbent Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez worried about a challenge from Republican state senator John Braun, but in the end she won a third term with nearly 54% of the vote.
OREGON
At the top of the state ticket, Democrat Tina Kotek won a second term as governor in her second time facing off against Republican Christine Drazan. At the Oregon Democratic Party’s election night party at the union-represented Portland Hilton, Oregon Labor Federation president Graham Trainor delivered the warm-up speech for Kotek, flanked by a crowd of labor union members. In her victory speech Kotek didn’t thank organized labor specifically, but she certainly has labor to thank. Labor organizations accounted for about $2.5 million of the more than $19 million in cash and in-kind contributions the Kotek reported this year. That included $900,000 from the Oregon Nurses Association, $549,000 from SEIU, $385,000 from AFSCME, $310,000 from UFCW, and $264,000 from the Oregon Labor Federation, and $39,000 from the Painters union, and $35,000 from Operating Engineers, $35,000 from Sheet Metal union, $20,000 from the Laborers, and $10,000 from AFT.
Kotek’s win matters in particular because every time labor advocates can get the Democratic-majority legislature to pass a bill, Kotek can be counted on to sign it; Drazan would almost certainly have vetoed priority union bills.
Oregon Legislature
Democrats already held 18 of the 30 seats in the state senate and 37 of the 60 seats in the state house. Now they appear to be on track to pick up one Senate seat and two House seats. Labor-backed candidates prevailed in every priority state legislative race. Two highlights:
- West Linn High School history teacher Michael Sugar, a leader of his local union, won in HD 40 (Oregon City); and
- Lamar Wise, a staffperson at Oregon AFSCME, won re-election after being appointed to fill a vacant seat in HD 48 (N Clackamas)
One of the most remarkable outcomes of the night was a loss by incumbent Kevin Mannix, state rep from Keizer and one of the state’s best-known Republicans. Mannix, former Republican party chair, was the author of several successful ballot measures that set mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes. He lost to Democrat Michael Welsh, a safety manager at Sherwin-Williams.
It took a lot of labor by labor to pull of those union electoral wins. Oregon Labor Federation — the state AFL-CIO — produced a tally of the work of affiliated union volunteers since September: 2,280 volunteer shifts, over 111,400 doors knocked, 68,950 completed phone calls to union members, and over 278,800 pieces of mail to union members.
ANOTHER BAD NIGHT FOR KNIGHT:
Billionaire Nike founder Phil Knight once again put millions into Republican campaigns in competitive races, and once again, most of them lost. Knight contributed about $3 million, backing Brad Hicks in SD 3 (Ashland), Tracy Cramer in SD 11 (Woodburn), Courtney Bangs in SD 16 (North Coast), Kevin Mannix in HD 21(Keizer), Noemi Legaspi in HD 22 (Woodburn), Max Sherman (NW Coast), and Scott Hege (Hood River). Only one of his seven candidates won: Bangs, who outpolled union-backed Democrat Rachel Armitage by about 5 percentage points.
County-level races
- Clackamas County: Labor-backed candidates swept the ballot. Former AFSCME member Catherine McMullen for County Clerk (67%) and Paul Savas (64%) and Diana Helm (58%) for county commission.
- Deschutes County: Amy Sabbadini (51%) and Morgan Schmidt (57%) won county commission races, and labor-chapter-opposed Ballot Measure 9-185 — which would have the County Commissioners elected by district that were arguably drawn to favor Republicans — was opposed by 62% of voters.
- Lane County: Labor-backed incumbent Heather Buch appeared to be winning in an extremely tight race.
- Marion County: Sarah Duncan and Maria Hinojos Pressey, both employees of the farmworker advocacy group PCUN, appeared to be losing their races for county commission very narrowly.
- Multnomah County: Both of the top two candidates for county chair and county commissioner had union backing. Shannon Singleton outpolled Julia Brim-Edwards for chair and Bri Williams —a member of AFSCME Local 88 — won out over Serena Cruz. The county used ranked choice voting for the first time this year.
- Washington County: Pam Treece appeared to be winning narrowly over Nafisa Fai for county chair; both had some union endorsements. Union-backed county commission candidate Steve Callaway appeared to be losing by a narrow margin to anti-data-center activist Kipperlyn Sinclair, who also had the backing of the union SEIU.
City-level races
- Beaverton: Rachel Philip (61%) defeated Evelyn Kocher; each had union backing.
- Eugene: Athena Aguiar (59%) defeated Mike Clark; each had union backing. And voters approved Measure 20-388 by 59%; local labor unions had a hand in crafting the measure, known as the Eugene Clean Energy Fund, which taxes large retail corporations to fund renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.
- Gresham: All three union-backed candidates won easily: incumbent mayor Travis Stovall, and city council candidates Heather Coleman-Cox and Heather Coleman-Cox
- Hillsboro: For city council, Diana Jackson and Karim Delgado were elected with union backing. And Dorian Russell outpolled Titonian Wallace Sr.; both had union endorsements.
- Milwaukie: Will Anderson, a legislative staffer and member of IBEW Local 89, won the race for mayor with union backing.
- Portland: All six incumbents won re-election, each of them counting some union endorsements. For District 3, that’s Steve Novick, Tiffany Koyama Lane, and Angelita Morillo. For District 4 that’s Olivia Clark, Mitch Green, and Eric Zimmerman.
Northwest Oregon Labor Council (NOLC), the local AFL-CIO body that covers Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington, and Columbia Counties, backed 14 candidates for city, county, and judicial office, and 10 of them won.
The labor council’s biggest win may have been its opposition to a Portland Ballot Measure 26-267. It would have diverted 2% of the city’s general fund to pay special projects proposed and voted on by residents, with nearly all details left to city council to determine. NOLC executive secretary-treasurer Laurie Wimmer co-chaired the “no” campaign, and members of Fire Fighters Local 43 made up the campaign’s core. The win — voters rejected it by 63% — is all the more remarkable in that the “no” campaign raised $128,000 compared to nearly $1.2 million raised by the “yes” campaign, particularly East County Rising Action Fund, which got most of its funding from groups in California and Massachusetts.
WASHINGTON
Deken Letinich is going to Olympia. Letinich is a former Laborers Local 335 officer who challenged incumbent Republican state rep John Ley in LD 19 with heavy union support, and won with 54%. It was his second attempt.
But three other union member candidates in Southwest Washington fell short:
- In LD 19, Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Central Labor Council president Terry Carlson, a former Weyerhaeuser logger, got 45% in his second challenge to incumbent Republican state rep Joel McEntire. That’s above the 38% he got two years ago.
- In LD 20, IBEW Local 48 union steward Evan Jones, a member of the Longview Port Commission, got 37% in his challenge to 12-term incumbent Republican state rep Ed Orcutt. Jones did better than the last three Democratic challengers.
- In a race for Clark County Council, high school history teacher and Vancouver Education Association union representative John Zingale got 48% in a challenge to incumbent Michelle Belkot.
