SACRAMENTO — Democrats have a growing problem with union members and working-class voters, a building block that’s been foundational to their political success.
Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation, thinks she has at least a partial solution.
“We’ve got to listen to them,” she said, “and not talk about things that do not play in their life, or that they don’t identify with.”
That may seem as straightforward as a palm-slap to the forehead. (Well, duh!) But it’s not necessarily something union leaders have done in the past. Often, Gonzalez said, the top-down instruction to labor’s political troops has been, “This is our message. Go sell it.”
Vote Harris. Elect a Democratic Congress. Stop Trump.
But none of that, she said, resonated with the large number of Republican and conservative-leaning California voters who also happen to be union members in proud standing. So the Labor Federation tried something different this election, avoiding words such as “Democrat” and “Republican,” “Biden,” “Harris” and “Trump” in its political pitch.
“The usual go-to, the top-of-the-ticket discussion with our union members, wasn’t going to get us anywhere,” Gonzalez said last week in a lengthy conversation at the Labor Federation’s downtown Sacramento headquarters. “And it would just shut them down for everything else.”
California was an oasis this November in a largely barren Democratic landscape. Even as they lost the White House and Senate, the party flipped three House seats in the state, helping Democrats to an overall gain of a single seat and holding Republicans to the barest majority in decades.
Several of those California races were very close, so the Democratic success can be attributed to any number of factors. But at least some credit goes to the Labor Federation and its speak-no-partisanship strategy, which helped yield a significant number of crossover votes in a several closely fought congressional contests.
As Democrats spend the next few years soul-searching and wilderness-wandering, it’s an approach to winning union members and working-class voters that, Gonzalez suggested, is worth studying across the country.
As recently as 2012, Democratic presidential candidates could count on the support of about 6 in 10 voters from union households. (That’s how exit pollsters typically measure the sentiment of union members; they ask whether a voter or someone they are living with belongs to a union.)
That percentage has fallen in every election Donald Trump has been on the ballot, to just about 5 in 10 voters. The decline may not seem like a lot, but even a small shift matters in close elections — 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 undertaken soon after Gonzalez, a former state lawmaker, became head of the Labor Federation in July 2022. “What did I want to do?” she asked, as the clang of a trolley car rang from the K Street Mall below. “Not talk to our members, but listen to them.”
Discussions were held throughout the state, in the Central Valley, the Inland Empire, Orange County and the L.A. region — home to the half-dozen most competitive congressional races in California. The groups were split among men and women, Democrats and Republicans; the separation was intended, Gonzalez said, to avoid turning conversations into political arguments.
The survey found that in virtually every district there were more self-identified Republican union members than Democrats — which didn’t necessarily match up with members’ voter registration. “Take back the House,” the national Democratic rallying cry, was obviously “not gonna fly,” Gonzalez said, nor would a message built around keeping a Democrat in the White House — even if both were seen as being to the greater advantage of union members.
Instead, strategists drew on something that emerged from those focus groups: a fundamental belief in the value of diligent labor. “We would ask questions like, ‘What do you like about your union?’ ” Gonzalez recollected. The oft-heard response: “My union fights for me because I work hard.”
That, in turn, led to a campaign focused on the failings of the 118th Congress, historically one of the least productive in history. The message was simple. If you performed as poorly on the job as your representative in Washington, you’d be fired.
Variations on that theme were repeated to tens of thousands of union members in each of the six competitive districts. In mailers. In discussions on front porches. On refrigerator magnets sent to their homes. “If I got as little done at my job,” the magnets read, “this refrigerator would be empty.”
A refrigerator magnet mailed to union members by the California Federation of Labor suggested they would be fired if they performed as poorly as their congressional representative. This one targeted Rep. Ken Calvert
(California Federation of Labor Unions)
Care was taken to include documentation from the likes of CNN and Fox News, lest attacks on the do-nothing Congress came across as a one-sided attack.
(It was a somewhat tougher sell in the open-seat contest to replace Democrat Katie Porter, but union strategists counted on Republican Scott Baugh being tainted by association with the Republican-led House. Democrat Dave Min narrowly won the Orange County contest.)
Rather than telling union members who they should vote for — the usual approach — “we left them to come to their own conclusion,” Gonzalez said. Not by making a partisan argument, but appealing to their work ethic.
It seemed to work. Not perfectly. Democrats knocked off Reps. Mike Garcia in northern L.A. County, Michelle Steel in Orange County and John Duarte in the Central Valley. (The latter two by not much). They failed to oust Republicans David Valadao in the Valley and Ken Calvert in the Inland Empire.
But the strategy was successful enough that Gonzalez plans to sit down with national labor leaders for a debriefing.
It was admittedly difficult for the self-described “bleeding-heart liberal” not to press the hair-on-fire argument about the dangers of Trump and the need for a Democratic check on his authoritarian impulses. Typically, Gonzalez said, “That’s how we talk.”
The approach to California union members — more a nudge than a shove — also had to be sold to skeptics. There has long been a sense within the labor movement that if “we just … ‘educate’ them enough,” she said, “they’ll be good Democrats.”
But that bespeaks an arrogance the party will have to overcome if it’s going to stanch the bleeding among union and working-class voters. Only then will Democrats end their exile in Washington.