GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris is demonstrating at Michigan’s union halls, standing alongside the state’s most powerful union leader as former President Donald Trump pushes back from rural steel mills and urges middle-class workers to trust him as the worker true advocates of their interests.
In the competition for blue wall states with deep-rooted unions, presidential candidates are making their case to workers in very different terms. And nowhere is that contrast more stark than in Michigan, where both candidates are vying for workers’ support in a race that could mark a defining moment for organized labor.
“The American dream was truly born here in Michigan,” Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, told a crowd of several hundred people while campaigning for Harris in Grand Rapids. Fain, who called Michigan “holy ground” for his union at the early October rally, warned that the dream is on “life support” and that unions like his are key to protecting American workers.
Harris, who plans to meet again with union members in Michigan on Friday, hopes her message – amplified by supporters like Fain – will resonate beyond the union families that once provided a solid base for the Democratic Party. Her campaign is increasingly worried about her standing among men in the blue wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where they are counting on union leaders to aid mobilize voters in a rapidly changing political landscape economy has changed.
Those concerns intensified recently when Harris failed to secure two key union contributions that went to President Joe Biden in 2020, who described himself as the most worker-friendly president in U.S. history. Both the International Association of Firefighters and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse anyone. The Teamsters cited the lack of majority support for Harris among its million-plus members.
The Teamsters have traditionally been less reliably Democratic than other unions, having historically supported Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Some state-level unions have also strayed from their national leadership, with Michigan’s Teamsters and California’s largest firefighters union supporting Harris.
Still, any break in unity within the labor movement could represent a blow to a party that has worked tough to restore unions as a key source of power at the ballot box.
“When you talk about unions, you’re talking about more than just unionized workers. Most people in states like Michigan have a family member or close friend in a union,” said Adrian Hemond, a longtime political strategist in Michigan. “Unions are just one vehicle to get that message out to workers.”
Trump has seized on the union’s non-endorsements, claiming they prove that rank-and-file workers support his vision for the country.
Many communities in the Midwest that once formed the core of the labor movement have moved to the right in recent decades, often in response to economic concerns such as deindustrialization and the reduction of trade barriers. During the same period, white voters without a college degree across the country began voting more conservatively for a variety of reasons, including concerns about cultural issues such as race and gender.
In Michigan, home to the Big Three automakers and the largest concentration of UAW workers, Trump is trying to win an even larger share of those votes by portraying Harris as a supporter of electric vehicle regulations and trade policies that he says will bring jobs relocated abroad.
In an attempt to separate union members from their leaders, he called Fain a “stupid idiot” and praised Tesla boss Elon Musk for firing striking workers. The UAW says this could intimidate people working for the Trump campaign or at Tesla who might want to join a union.
In 2020, Biden narrowly defeated blue wall states that broke with Democrats in 2016 on his way to winning the White House. This victory was based on the robust support of union voters, who have traditionally been a turnout machine for Democrats in the Midwest. But it differed in many ways from previous Democratic victories.
While Trump narrowly won white voters in Michigan in 2020, the former president’s vote margin was highly polarized across education, occupation and income; According to AP VoteCast, a comprehensive survey of voters, Trump won nearly two-thirds of white voters without a college degree in the state, while Biden and Trump were nearly tied among white voters with a college degree.
Among Michigan’s nonwhite voters, who make up 16% of the state’s electorate, Biden won a whopping 80% of the vote. However, there have been recent signs that the coalition is unraveling, particularly among Arab Americans in the Detroit area, many of whom are expected to turn away from the Democrats because of the Biden administration’s approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict concerns.
As Trump seeks the presidency again, his campaign hopes to boost GOP support among the state’s non-college-educated white and non-white workers to unprecedented levels, in part to offset the expected losses Trump has suffered among college-educated white voters will suffer in which he has lost support since his defeat in 2020 and subsequent efforts to overturn the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania and other swing states.
“I think part of the problem that Democrats have with some white male blue-collar voters is not with the union itself,” said Brian Rothenberg, a former UAW spokesman. “It’s the children or relatives of union members who are just not doing so well.”
Harris sought to win over these voters by emphasizing how unions benefit all workers. At a Labor Day rally in Detroit, she said, “You better thank a union member” for the five-day work week, infirmed and paid leave, and vacation time.
“When union wages go up, everyone’s wages go up,” Harris said.
A little more than a year after securing novel contracts for UAW workers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, Fain has staked much of his political capital — and potentially his future — on Harris’ support. He argues that the UAW’s support for Democrats has remained consistent in recent elections, with about 60% of members voting for the Democratic presidential candidate.
Biden became the first president to picket the line when he visited Michigan in delayed 2023 amid the autoworkers’ strike. A day later, Trump traveled to Michigan and appeared at a nonunion plant where he railed against Biden’s push for electric vehicles and urged workers to “get your union leaders to support me and I’ll take care of the rest.”
Union leaders said his first term was anything but worker-friendly, citing unfavorable rulings from the nation’s top labor authority and the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as unfulfilled promises of jobs in the auto industry. They highlight Democratic achievements in states like Michigan, including the recent repeal of a union-restricting right-to-work law passed by a Republican-controlled legislature more than a decade ago.
As membership declines in states like Michigan, Fain will need to win over more than just union members to secure a victory for Harris, who campaigned alongside him in the state. If the Michigan union president fails to deliver after all these efforts, it could raise questions about his union’s political influence in future elections.
“This is a generation-defining moment we are in right now,” Fain told Michigan voters. “This election will determine where we go.”
___
Cappelletti reported from Lansing, Michigan. Associated Press writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.
