Out east in Maine, the polls show Graham Platner, a union-recruited oysterman, trouncing both current State Governor Janet Mills, the establishment Democrat pick, and Susan Collins, the incumbent Republican senator.
It’s not just blue states either. Down in deep-red Alabama, dues-paying plumber Andrew Sneed is outraising his GOP opponent, incumbent Representative Dale Strong, all while forgoing corporate donations. And in Texas, Taylor Rehmet, a local president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, just stunned pundits by handily winning a runoff for the state senate.
Time will tell how Rehmet fares in office and whether Platner and Sneed notch victories at the ballot box. Regardless, something seems to be happening out there for the very few union-linked candidates we have put out in the field — and in not exactly labor-friendly regions either.
A new report from the Center for Working-Class Politics, Arizona State University’s Center for Work and Democracy, and Jacobin titled “Can Unions Make a Difference?” that appears to get to the crux of the matter. By way of diagnosing the problem, the study demonstrates that the insane wealth stats highlighted by Bernie Sanders and his compatriots on the Fighting Oligarchy Tour are of similar disproportion to the in-real-life class composition of our government.
Today less than 10% of the nation’s voters are in a union — down from more than 30% in the 1960s, when Martin Luther King Jr saw the writing on the wall and decried “right-to-work” as a false slogan meant to eviscerate labor unions.
And yet right now, the percentage of candidates we’re trying to send to congress who also happen to be union members is nowhere close to 10%. The CWCP took the trouble to identify all congressional candidates between 2010 and 2022 and found that just 5% have been union members. CWCP director Jared Abbott says the center is now accumulating evidence that in 2026, Platner and Sneed are…
Auteur: Ned Rust
