Kamala Harris suffered a blow to her campaign Wednesday when the Teamsters, one of the most influential labor unions with long ties to the Democratic Party, declined to make a presidential endorsement.
The announcement from the leadership of the 1.3-million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters marked the first time in nearly three decades the union sat out a presidential election. In every presidential election since 1996—the last year the Teamsters did not endorse a presidential candidate—the union has endorsed a Democrat.
About two-thirds of the union’s membership supports Donald Trump, recent electronic and phone surveys found. About a third supports Harris. Earlier this year, Joe Biden bested Trump in the organization’s town hall straw polls.
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The union’s president, Sean O’Brien, cited the members’ divides as one reason the Teamsters would not be endorsing. He also added that he did not get the promises he was hoping for from Trump or Harris.
“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” he said, noting that neither candidate would agree not to interfere in the union’s key campaigns or industry, nor to honor their right to strike.
Trump immediately positioned the decision as a victory.
“While the Executive Board of the Teamsters is making no formal endorsement, the vast majority of rank-and-file working men and women in this important organization want President Donald Trump back in the White House,” his team wrote in a press release Wednesday afternoon.
Soon after the announcement, Teamsters regional councils representing members in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada, as well as in California, Hawaii, and Guam announced that they would be endorsing Harris.
Her staff touted the news, with a release from the campaign emphasizing how it had already started coordinating with the Nevada Teamsters and would soon begin those efforts in the other competitive states.
“While Donald Trump says striking workers should be fired, Vice President Harris has literally walked the picket line and stood strong with organized labor for her entire career,” Harris spokesperson Lauren Hitt wrote in a statement reported by NPR. “The vice president’s strong union record is why Teamsters locals across the country have already endorsed her—alongside the overwhelming majority of organized labor.”
Earlier in the summer, Republicans invited O’Brien to address the party’s convention. He gave a fiery seventeen-minute speech slamming the corporate elite.
The Teamsters also made a rare donation to the Republican National Committee after O’Brien met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
The union has significant membership in the key “blue wall” states of the Midwest, where margins will be slim. With the candidates running neck-and-neck, the decision not to endorse could make all the difference.
