SACRAMENTO — Democrats have a growing problem with union members and working-class voters, a cornerstone of their political success.
Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor, believes there is at least a partial solution.
“We have to listen to them and not talk about things that are not relevant to their lives or that they cannot relate to,” she said. Said.
It may seem as simple as tapping your palm on the forehead. (Well, duh!) But that’s not necessarily what union leaders have done in the past. Mr Gonzalez said there was often top-down direction to Labor’s political units. Please go sell. ”
Please vote for Harris. Elect a Democratic Congress. Stop playing Trump.
But none of that resonated with many Republican and conservative California voters who also happen to be proud union members, she said. Therefore, the Federation of Labor Federations tried something different this election, avoiding words such as “Democrats” and “Republicans,” “Biden,” “Harris,” and “Trump” in their political propaganda. .
“The usual go-to, top-of-the-line discussions with union members are not going to get us anywhere,” Gonzalez said in a long conversation last week at the Confederation of Labor headquarters in downtown Sacramento. I couldn’t do it,” he said. “And that just shuts them down for everything else.”
California this November was an oasis in a largely barren land for Democrats. Despite losing the White House and the Senate, the party flipped three House seats in the state and helped Democrats gain one seat overall, giving Republicans their narrowest majority in decades. maintained the standard.
Some of those California races were very close, so the Democrats’ success can be attributed to a variety of factors. But at least some of the credit goes to the Labor federation and its partisan strategy of non-dispute, which helped it win significant numbers of crossover votes in some close parliamentary elections.
As Democrats spend the next few years on their own quest and wandering in the wilderness, Gonzalez suggested that approaches to winning over union members and working-class voters are worth studying nationally.
In 2012, Democratic presidential candidates could count on the support of about 6 in 10 voters in union households. (Exit pollsters typically gauge union member sentiment this way, asking whether voters or people they live with belong to a union.)
That percentage has declined in every election in which Donald Trump has voted, to just about 5 in 10 voters. This decline may not seem like a big deal, but in close elections, even small changes matter, especially in battleground states with large union memberships, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The California Strategy grew out of a series of focus groups conducted shortly after Gonzalez, a former state lawmaker, took over as president of the Labor Federation in July 2022. she asked as the trolley cars rumbled from the K Street Mall below. “Don’t talk to your members, listen to them.”
Discussions were held across the state, including the Central Valley, the Inland Empire, Orange County and the Los Angeles area, home to about half a dozen of California’s most competitive congressional races. The group was divided into men and women, Democrats and Republicans. Gonzalez said the separation was to prevent the conversation from turning into a political argument.
The study found that in nearly every precinct, more people identified themselves as members of Republican unions than Democrats, but that did not necessarily equate to union members’ voter registration. Gonzalez said the national Democratic rallying cry, “Take back the House,” clearly “doesn’t get across,” and messages centered on keeping Democrats in the White House, both of which are more likely to help the president. Even if it was seen as an advantage, he said it wasn’t. Union member.
Instead, strategists used what emerged from these focus groups: a fundamental belief in the value of hard work. “We ask questions like, ‘What do you like about the union?'” Gonzalez recalled. A common answer is, “My union will fight for me because I work hard.”
The result was a campaign focused on the failures of the 118th Congress, one of the least productive in history. The message was simple. If you were as bad at your job as the Washington representative, you would be fired.
Variations on this theme were repeated with tens of thousands of union members in each of the six competitive districts. By mailer. During the discussion at the door. About the refrigerator magnets sent to your home. “If I did any work at all, this refrigerator would be empty,” the magnet said.
Refrigerator magnets mailed to union members by the California Federation of Labor suggested they would be fired if they performed as poorly as the members of Congress. The incident targeted Congressman Ken Calvert.
(California Federation of Labor Unions)
Care was taken to include documents from the likes of CNN and Fox News so that the attack on the inaction Congress would not be perceived as a one-sided attack.
(It was a bit tougher to replace Democrat Katie Porter in an open-seat election, but union strategists say Republican Scott Baugh’s chances of winning a seat in the Republican-led House of Representatives were a little tougher.) I expected it to be tainted.In the Orange County race, Democrat Dave Ming won by a narrow margin.)
Gonzalez said that instead of telling union members who to vote for (the usual practice), “we let them come to their own conclusions.” It wasn’t about making partisan arguments, it was about appealing to their work ethics.
It seemed to work. It’s not perfect. Democrats lost Rep. Mike Garcia in northern Los Angeles County, Rep. Michelle Steele in Orange County, and Rep. John Duarte in the Central Valley. (The latter two are no big deal). They unsuccessfully ousted Republicans David Valadao of the Valley and Ken Calvert of the Inland Empire.
But the strategy has been so successful that Gonzalez plans to hold a debriefing session with national labor leaders.
For a self-described “bloody liberal,” it was clearly difficult not to press fiery arguments about the danger of Trump and the need for Democrats to check his authoritarian impulses. Gonzalez always said, “That’s the way we talk.”
California’s approach to union members — more of a nudge than a push — also had to be sold to skeptics. She said there has long been a sense within the labor movement that “if we ‘educated’ them enough, they would become good Democrats.”
But this speaks to the arrogance the party must overcome if it is to stem the hemorrhage of union and working-class voters. Only then will Democrats end their exile in Washington.
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