WASHINGTON — Of all the voters who might be expected to resist the charms of Donald J. Trump, the two million members of the Service Employees International Union would most likely be near the top of the list.
The union, which endorsed Hillary Clinton in November,
is widely regarded as one of the more progressive in the labor
movement. It skews female and racially diverse — roughly the opposite of
a Trump rally, in other words.
But
the union’s president, Mary Kay Henry, acknowledged that Mr. Trump
holds appeal even for some of her members. “There is deep economic
anxiety among our members and the people we’re trying to organize that I
believe Donald Trump’s message is tapping into,” Ms. Henry said.
In
expressing her concern, Ms. Henry reflected a different form of anxiety
that is weighing on some union leaders and Democratic operatives: their
fear that Mr. Trump, if not effectively countered, may draw an
unusually large number of union voters in a possible general election
matchup. This could, in turn, bolster Republicans in swing states like
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all of which President Obama
won twice.
The
source of the attraction to Mr. Trump, say union members and leaders,
is manifold: the candidate’s unapologetically populist positions on
certain economic issues, particularly trade; a frustration with the
impotence of conventional politicians; and above all, a sense that he
rejects the norms of Washington discourse.
“They
feel he’s the one guy who’s saying what’s on people’s minds,” Thomas
Hanify, the president of the Indiana state firefighters union, said of
his rank and file.
Mr.
Hanify said that Mr. Trump has so far dominated the “firehouse chatter”
in his state. While he allowed that his members tilt Republican, he
estimated that most followed the lead of the union’s international
leadership and supported Mr. Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Ms.
Henry and other labor leaders remain confident that they can keep their
members in the fold by making a case that the Republicans’ economic
agenda, including Mr. Trump’s, runs counter to the interests of working
people. But they also see Mr. Trump as posing particular risks.
“Anyone
who talks about dividing people in the country as a solution is a
threat to the country, to democracy, the economy, and to working people,
and we take every one of those seriously,” said Richard L. Trumka, the
president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.
The
potential pairing of Mr. Trump and union members could be helped along
by a sense that Mr. Trump, unlike more conventional Republicans, has
historically enjoyed a cordial relationship with labor on many of his
real estate projects.
“He
has put his fair share into hiring union people,” said Richard Sabato,
the president of a building and construction trades council in northern
New Jersey. “He’s done that in Manhattan, in New Jersey.”
But that is not always the case. The owners of Trump International Hotel Las Vegas
filed objections to a recent vote by roughly 500 of its workers to
unionize, and the National Labor Relations Board has found merit to the
claims that the hotel violated workers’ labor rights. (The Trump
campaign did not respond to requests for comment.)
Mr.
Sabato said that his members, who lean Republican but in many cases
voted for Mr. Obama, would “march behind” Mr. Trump on the issue of
illegal immigration.
Even more important for many union members has been the issue of economic globalization. Mr. Trump has railed against the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
the 12-country trade deal the administration finished negotiating last
year. And he has bemoaned the administration’s failure to stand up to
what he and many union members see as China’s mercantilist policies.
He
has also fulminated against plans by the company that owns Nabisco to
shift some production to Mexico — “I love Oreos,” he said, “I will never
eat them again” — and vowed to impose a punishing tariff on imports of
Ford cars unless the company canceled a $2.5 billion investment in
plants in that country.
“We
like that he does not support TPP, that he has taken the position that
there should be trade tariffs for a company that moves jobs overseas,”
said Ryan Leenders, 30, a member of the International Association of
Machinists in Washington State. Mr. Leenders, who estimated that
one-quarter to one-third of his factory’s union workers were Trump
supporters, said he voted for Mr. Obama in 2008 and wrote in Ron Paul in
2012.
Reflecting
the anti-establishment mood that has engulfed parts of the labor
movement, Mr. Leenders said he believed that more than half of his
union’s workers support Senator Bernie Sanders, while very few support
Mrs. Clinton, despite the fact that the machinists union endorsed her
last summer. (A machinists spokesman said that, “At this point, any
estimates of support for a candidate are more a passing snapshot of
popularity.”)
Many union officials are grappling with a similar dynamic, including the Teamsters, whose members have a “Teamsters for Trump” Facebook page, with more than 650 likes.
John
Bulgaro, the president of Teamsters Local 294 in Albany, said that Mr.
Trump had generated excitement among his members, but that “a lot of
people like Bernie Sanders.” He cautioned that they would need to hear
more about Mr. Trump’s position on labor rights.
To
be sure, polling of union voters shows that Mrs. Clinton remains
broadly popular and would carry most Sanders supporters in a matchup
against Mr. Trump. But the same polling suggests that Mr. Trump could
perform unusually well among these voters for a Republican nominee.
Christopher M. Shelton, the president of the Communications Workers of America, which endorsed Mr. Sanders in December,
said that while polling of his members showed Mr. Trump’s support
lagging far behind support for Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton, it was
higher than Republican presidential candidates typically net.
Despite
Mr. Trump’s appeal, particularly among white working-class men,
longtime labor officials and political operatives point out that Mr.
Trump’s popularity before a single primary vote has been cast is a
vastly different proposition than whether he would be able to retain
that support in the fall.
“In
every election around this time there are stories suggesting that union
members will defect — ‘Oh, white union men won’t vote for Obama,’”
Steve Rosenthal, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and progressive political organizer, wrote in an email response to questions.
In
the end, Mr. Rosenthal said, union voters almost always end up voting
overwhelmingly Democratic in presidential elections. White male union
members favored Mr. Obama in 2008, and John Kerry in 2004, by roughly 20
percentage points, according to polling commissioned by the
A.F.L.-C.I.O., even as white men over all favored the Republican
candidate by a large margin.
Mr.
Rosenthal said that unions have proved adept at building support among
their members for Democratic nominees who generally embrace their
economic agenda and at undermining support for Republicans.
In a recent study of working-class voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania based on over 1,500 interviews, Working America,
a labor-affiliated group, found genuine support for Mr. Trump among
Democrats. But Matt Morrison, the group’s deputy director, said that
many Trump supporters were receptive to information that suggested a gap
between the candidate’s words and deeds.
“Just
delivering a little bit of new information, we could see that his brand
takes a hit,” Mr. Morrison said, referring to reports that Mr. Trump
may have used undocumented workers on some of his development projects.
Other
experts cautioned that even if Mr. Trump were to retain substantial
support among white male union members without college degrees, that
would not necessarily yield him an electoral advantage in November if he
became the Republican nominee.
The
voters whom labor unions must typically work the hardest to turn out,
like younger voters and Latinos, “are groups that will be highly
motivated” against Mr. Trump, said Guy Molyneux, a pollster who has
surveyed union voters extensively over the years.
Mr.
Molyneux also said that many of the union voters attracted by Mr. Trump
were among the 30 percent of union voters who already vote reliably
Republican.
Still,
unlike most other Republicans, whose appeal to union voters rarely
extends beyond cultural issues like gun rights, Mr. Trump’s economic
pronouncements have a greater potential to scramble the standard
political calculus.
“I
do think that Trump is a threat,” said Mike Lux, a progressive activist
who is a former labor official and veteran of President Bill Clinton’s
administration. “If the Democratic nominee is Hillary, and she’s mushy
at all on the trade issue, Trump will take that issue and drive it and
drive it and drive it.”
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