MINNEAPOLIS — Many union voters are disenchanted with both President Donald Trump and Democrats, fed up with the surging costs of food and gas, the war with Iran and slick career politicians.
The Washington Post interviewed 27 rank-and-file union workers at the national convention of the AFL-CIO in Minneapolis this week, and nearly all said they disapproved of Trump — including the 10 current or recent Republicans and independents. Most also criticized the Democratic Party, saying its leaders should fight harder on economic issues for the working class.
This fall, union voters could be crucial in 10 competitive House races in the country, according to Democratic political strategists. The Democratic Party would need to win three seats in the House and four seats in the Senate to flip Congress. The AFL-CIO has pledged to mobilize 16 million voters from union households in the midterms, up from 14 million in 2022.
“Right now, I don’t think we’re getting support that we need from either party,” said Heather McKenzie, an electrical workers union member in Nebraska. “Nebraska’s one of those flyover states that nobody pays attention to, but we’re feeling it,” she said, referencing recent mass layoffs at a Tyson Foods plant and the looming closure of a Kellogg’s factory in Omaha.
McKenzie was a Republican who voted for Trump in 2016 but switched parties in 2020, mourning a party that she said had “gone so far to the right.” She is thrilled that Dan Osborn, a former union mechanic with an economically populist platform, is running for U.S. Senate as an independent in Nebraska.
Unions remain one of the most dependable forces for helping the Democratic Party mobilize working-class voters, especially in key swing states. But the party has lost ground with union voters, with some embracing Trump starting in 2016. The shift was fueled by Trump’s economic nationalism, his promise to restore U.S. manufacturing jobs and his accusations that Democrats had abandoned them.
Joe Biden recovered some of that lost ground when he won the presidential election in 2020, but Vice President Kamala Harris performed worse than Biden, winning 53 percent of union households to Trump’s 45 percent.
“President Trump has always been clear about the fact that oil and gas prices — and thus overall inflation — will rapidly drop as soon as the Iran situation is resolved,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement in response to The Post’s reporting that union voters are upset about inflation and economy under Trump.
“Prior to the start of Operation Epic Fury, American workers had recovered almost half of the real wage losses they experienced under Joe Biden thanks to this Administration’s commonsense agenda of deregulation, tax cuts, and energy abundance,” Desai added.
Among current and former union Trump supporters at the AFL-CIO convention, three, including Jason Small of Montana, told The Post they had soured on him.
“Unfortunately, when he stepped in the office this time, he crashed the infrastructure bill that Biden had put together, which would have been so many American jobs for construction workers,” said Small, 47, a union boilermaker and leader in the Montana AFL-CIO who voted for Trump in 2024 and 2020.
“A lot of good talk, though,” he said.
One three-time Trump supporter, Sue Watanabe, 59, said she disapproved of the Iran war and Trump’s combative personality, but not enough to disavow him completely.
A mother of five and union baker at a Cub Foods grocery store in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, Watanabe said she “goes back and forth” on whether she continues to support Trump. She feels good about the economy, having earned more than $100,000 last year, which allowed her to go on vacation. She appreciates Trump’s approach to running the country as a business, she said.
“I can be fickle,” said Watanabe, who has not decided how she will vote in the midterms. She doesn’t rule out Democrats, and previously considered voting for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) for president.
Democrats need to mobilize as many union voters as possible if they hope to win back Congress this fall. That could prove difficult.
Ieisha Franceis, 47, who often has to ask for extensions on utility bills to buy food, said she believes the Democratic Party is not fighting hard enough for working-class people. Franceis works as a certified nursing assistant making $17.50 an hour in Durham, North Carolina.
“We need to get candidates who can relate to: ‘What bill do I pay?’” said Franceis, who works at an assisted-living facility and is a member of the Union of Southern Service Workers.
“Democrats could be doing much better,” said Brett Large, a mechanical insulator for the past 37 years in Southern Wisconsin, and a union leader for the Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers Local 19. “Working people seem to keep getting missed, and we’re the ones that vote.”
Workers in his union are divided over the president, said Large, who identifies as independent. “Our members are worried about taxes. They’re all worried about their wages. They’re worried about being able to afford gas. They wouldn’t be able to pay for a house, get a loan. They’re paying off credit cards instead of accumulating,” Large said. “[Democrats] have to somehow figure out how to reach working people.”
The Democratic Party is trying to pick up disenchanted union and working-class voters by running working-class and union-friendly candidates.
Most prominently, the party rallied behind oyster farmer Graham Platner, who has championed a pro-labor platform in his campaign to unseat longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine. That race could help decide which party controls the Senate.
In Pennsylvania, Bob Brooks, president of the state firefighters union, is running in one of the most competitive House districts in the country. Union flight attendant Kaela Berg in Minnesota is running for an open House seat on a pro-labor platform. And Sam Forstag, a union smoke jumper, won the Democratic primary in a red district in Montana in June.
Picking candidates with union experience and a focus on affordability will help Democrats appeal to working-class voters, said Steve Rosenthal, a Democratic strategist and former political director of the AFL-CIO.
“Some people in the party have recognized that working people and union members make really good candidates,” Rosenthal said. “If you continue to try to elect career politicians, lawyers and business people, you’re going to get the same results.”
The AFL-CIO, which represents unions with 15 million members, is preparing to talk to millions of members about the midterms through phone banking, door-knocking, texting and conversations at work, where labor officials believe unions are known and trusted.
“There’s only one institution that people trust to fight back, to protect the vote and protect our democracy. It’s our unions,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler told a crowd of hundreds of union members and leaders in Minneapolis this week. “This year we’re going to turn out 16 million, the most ambitious program we’ve ever run.”
The Post also spoke to local and national officials from more than a dozen AFL-CIO-affiliated unions, including those that represent workers from the building trades, manufacturing, health care and the Postal Service. Most said that a significant minority of their members supported Trump in 2024 and that they planned to focus on voting records and platforms rather than individual candidates and parties. While some Trump voters are dug in, they said, others could be moved.
Hasan Solomon, the political director of the 600,000-member International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said he believed some of their previously Trump-voting members could be swayed.
The parties “do this playbook with gays, god, and guns in the midterms. Those are wedge issues that people have positions on,” Solomon said. “But the Machinists have our own 3 ‘g’s’: it’s gas, groceries and grandma. We turn that frustration into voter mobilization.”
Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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