As unions awaken to renewed political clout, Sherrod Brown hopes to benefit by AndrewRomano
LAS VEGAS — On a recent Saturday afternoon, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown strayed from the same old circuit he has made for the last quarter-century — Ohio to Capitol Hill, Capitol Hill to Ohio — and instead flew west to Nevada. As far as anyone could recall, Brown had never campaigned in the Silver State before. Yet he knew exactly where he wanted to go first: the headquarters of Nevada’s powerful and politically influential Culinary Workers Union, Local 226, in the shadow of the Strip.
In other words, Brown would campaign nationally just like he’s always campaigned in Ohio: as a Labor Democrat himself. The goal, he says, would be to portray the president as a “phony populist” who won the White House by duping workers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — and to pitch himself to those same voters as the real deal.
Brown’s message seemed to resonate. Afterward, I buttonholed D. Taylor, who led Local 226 from 1990 to 2002 and now serves as president of its parent union, Unite Here. “The Democratic Party represents the people,” Harry Truman added in 1948. “It is pledged to work for labor.” In response, a post-New Deal generation of politicians — Gary Hart and Bill Clinton, the neo-liberals and New Democrats — started to steer the party toward a more moderate, market-friendly agenda meant to appeal to the college-educated, baby-boomer professionals who now constituted its primary class constituency . Free trade. Financial deregulation. Welfare reform. Public-private partnerships. Technocratic “innovation.
“I’d hang around for two or three hours in the morning or afternoon, and I would listen to workers coming in,” Brown recalls. “A lot of them were working at least two, maybe three shifts. I knew their kids because I'd gone to the big public high school, and I’d only recently graduated. Right away I understood that they had more challenges than I did, as a doctor's kid. If they got in trouble, they didn't have the same safety net, the same privileges.
The ripple effects of this small but significant comeback have started to spread. Over the last year, teachers have gone on strike in Arizona, Colorado, Los Angeles, North Carolina, Oklahoma and West Virginia. In November, Missouri voters overwhelmingly defeated a Republican right-to-work measure. And 2018 was a “banner year” for organizing and bargaining in newsrooms nationwide.
It’s there in the way he talks about his proposals, as he did during a “Views and Brews” event with local Democrats at Lovelady Brewing in Henderson, a Vegas suburb. As a veteran senator, Brown has no shortage of legislative ideas, most of which are designed to strengthen key labor standards to reflect an economy that increasingly relies on alternative work arrangements . Expand collective bargaining rights. Ensure that alternative workers get benefits too.
“As I’ve done this Dignity of Work tour, I’ve heard from people like you who have pushed back on what we do,” Brown said. “And you’re right: Democratic presidents never do enough. Sure, they put really good, progressive, pro-labor folks in the Department of Labor. But you’ve got to think about the whole government.
Identity and ideology would likely be bigger hurdles. As a straight white male who will turn 68 the week of the 2020 election, Brown is not the sort of trailblazing candidate that many Democrats want to lead their diverse party.
Yet the mood of the Democratic base is probably more aspirational than rational right now — and the ultimate benefit of Brown’s pro-union approach, were he to run, is that it could help him bridge such gaps. It’s possible to imagine an electoral scenario in the not-too-distant future that proves Brown’s point about the crossover appeal of his Labor Democrat pitch. Over the last decade, the Culinary Union has helped transform Nevada into a reliable Democratic redoubt, so as Rusty McAllister, executive secretary treasurer of the Nevada State AFL-CIO, put it before Brown spoke, “They’re all coming — and there’s not one candidate who can win here unless we help them. They have to come through us.” If D.
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