Here’s Where Congressional Candidates Stand On The Progressive Labor Agenda

By C.M. Lewis and Kevin Reuning

Labor is back on the agenda.

With the 2020 election season heating up and labor strikes at the highest water mark since the 1980s, Presidential candidates are catering to labor unions—one of the Democratic Party’s most important organized backers—with unprecedented and sweeping plans for labor law reform. On top of that, they’re going directly to union voters to make the case for their candidacies, attending town halls run by SEIU, the Teamsters, UNITE HERE, and the AFT and NEA.

But how does that affect down ballot races?

Back in November, we ran a piece on public messaging on labor looking at a number of Congressional races, finding that many progressive candidates had work to do to communicate their labor agendas and challenge long-established incumbents. Our conclusion: incumbent Democrats guarantee a baseline of support to labor voting priorities, and to beat them insurgent candidates need to vocally embrace popular and bold ideas, like the policy proposals we polled in September of last year.

We followed that up with a candidate survey conducted in an expanded number of races (including a few vulnerable Republican-held Districts with progressive Democrats running as challengers), including both incumbents and all candidates running in those Districts. In sum, we targeted the following districts:

  • AZ-01. Incumbent: Tom O’Halleran (D)

  • CA-12. Incumbent: Nancy Pelosi (D)

  • GA-13. Incumbent: David Scott (D)

  • IL-01. Incumbent: Bobby Rush (D)

  • IL-03. Incumbent: Dan Lipinski (D)

  • IL-07. Incumbent: Danny Davis (D)

  • MA-01. Incumbent: Richard Neal (D)

  • MA-04. Incumbent: Joe Kennedy III (D)*

  • MD-05. Incumbent: Steny Hoyer (D)

  • NE-02. Incumbent: Don Bacon (R)

  • NY-03. Incumbent: Thomas Suozzi (D)

  • NY-09. Incumbent: Yvette Clark (D)

  • NY-12. Incumbent: Carolyn Maloney (D)

  • NY-16. Incumbent: Eliot Engel (D)

  • OH-03. Incumbent: Joyce Beatty (D)

  • OR-03. Incumbent: Earl Blumenaeur (D)

  • TX-10. Incumbent: Michael McCaul (R)

  • TX-25. Incumbent: Roger Williams (R)

  • TX-28. Incumbent: Henry Cuellar (D)

  • WA-06. Incumbent: Derek Kilmer (D)

  • WA-10. Incumbent: Denny Heck (D)

Few incumbents responded. The Engel campaign accused us of having endorsed his opponents (note: neither the authors or Data for Progress has endorsed candidates in the NY-16), and touted his labor record (we previously found Engel has a better-than-average labor record for House Democrats). Henry Cuellar’s campaign—well, we’ll let the receipt speak for itself.

 
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Challengers, however, overwhelmingly responded. The results: across the board, insurgents are running on bold progressive labor proposals. 

The graph below shows where each candidate stands on the progressive labor issues we surveyed. The almost uniform blue is a good sign: challengers have embraced a progressive labor agenda. Only one candidate, Sammy Ravelo—a union police officer running in NY-16—opposed any of the issues we asked. A handful of candidates reported areas where they were unsure about their positions, reflected in grey. 

Importantly, however, every respondent was supportive of the Raise the Wage Act, LGBTQ employment protections, the PRO Act, federal legislation expanding public sector bargaining, the federal right to strike, fair scheduling, and a federal “just cause” standard abolishing at-will employment. 

 
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For us, vocally communicating support for labor issues is crucial: if progressives are running on progressive, pro-labor policies well ahead of mainstream Democrats, unions, union members, and friends of labor need to know that. With that in mind, we asked candidates to report whether their support/opposition on the areas we surveyed appeared on their campaign websites. Note: some candidates have updated their platforms since we surveyed; these responses are accurate as of mid-December, and many candidates indicated they would be updating their platforms to include a greater range of labor issues.

Candidate self-reporting of their publicly available positions, per their websites, reveals more variation. As of mid-December, Lauren Ashcraft, Russ Cirincione, Anthony Clark, Joshua Collins, Andom Ghebreghiorgis, Isiah James, Julie Oliver, Rebecca Parson, and Heidi Sloan not only supported progressive labor policies, but put their positions clearly on their websites.

 
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Interestingly, a third of respondents (11 of 33) also self-reported current or past union membership, overwhelmingly in the public sector and primarily in education unions. One candidate, Melanie D’Arrigo, self-reported past or current membership with a primarily private sector union: the Hotel Trades Council, an affiliate of UNITE HERE. In contrast, no incumbents in the surveyed districts are known to have past union membership.

So what’s the takeaway?

First: pushing for major overhauls in labor policy is on the political agenda, and organized labor should seriously consider backing insurgent Democrats that support a pro-worker agenda, especially candidates like Jessica Cisneros (running against Henry Cuellar) and Rebecca Parson (running against Derek Kilmer) who are challenging the most anti-worker Democrats in Congress. Even in the case of more reliably supportive incumbents, unions should take seriously viable candidates (many of them union members) that won’t just vote with labor most of the time: they’re signaling they’ll champion workers’ rights.

Second: candidates at the top of the ticket proposing bold ideas like universal “just cause” and sectoral bargaining need to support down ballot insurgents, even ones running against incumbent Democrats, if they hope to have adequate Congressional support once they’re in the White House. Both Sanders and Warren have proposed big, sweeping overhauls of labor law; they’ll need allies to secure it. 

Democrats like Henry Cuellar and Derek Kilmer have shown time and time again that they’ll proudly vote with corporations against workers’ interests; the political composition of Congress needs to change dramatically if a progressive labor agenda is to advance. Elizabeth Warren has endorsed insurgents like Jessica Cisneros; however, the Sanders campaign has been far more cautious. Building a deep bench of Congressional progressives—even if it means replacing incumbent Democrats—is a necessity.

Finally: labor needs to seize the moment. The proven popularity of aggressive labor policy reform, combined with the willingness of politicians to embrace it, shows that there's an unprecedented opportunity to realign American labor law in favor of workers. Although the PRO Act accomplishes significant gains like banning “Right-to-Work” laws, most of its proposals tinker around the edges of labor policy, only codifying Obama-era National Labor Relations Board rules into law. Getting behind the progressive labor agenda, and demanding that candidates support it, is a political necessity. Unions can’t assume that this window will remain open forever.

As we’ve shown, bold ideas are popular. Candidates up and down the ballot are campaigning on labor policy that would fundamentally realign economic power away from corporations, and toward workers: including a wide array of insurgent Democrats. Candidates, especially candidates like Rebecca Parson and Jessica Cisneros, are challenging lackluster Democratic records on organized labor and workers’ rights with big, pro-worker agendas aimed at building political and economic power for working families. 

There’s an appetite for bold a bold, progressive labor agenda, and a wide array of insurgents support it. Unions and progressives at the top of the ticket need to pay attention.


C.M. Lewis (@thehousered) is an editor of Strikewave and a union activist in Pennsylvania.

Kevin Reuning (@kevinreuning) is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Miami University.

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