Kamala Harris pitches herself to California unions as 2020 candidates fight for labor support

SACRAMENTO — With proposals to bump the paychecks of working families and peans to the legacy of the labor movement, the Democratic candidates for president aren’t wasting time in courting the support of influential unions in California and around the country.

The 2020 contenders are racing to pitch themselves as the strongest champions of working people, in hopes of winning key labor endorsements that come with armies of campaign workers. That was on display Monday night, when Sen. Kamala Harris fired up a dinner crowd at a labor conference in Sacramento, receiving multiple standing ovations.

“Unions built the middle class in this country,” Harris told about 600 cheering union members and supporters in a downtown hotel ballroom. “People have a five-day workweek because of unions. People have sick leave because of unions. People have an eight-hour workday because of unions. People have health care because of unions.”

On the same day, eight other presidential candidates addressed a union town hall event in Washington, D.C., talking up their own policy plans and labor bona fides.

The union stamp of approval could be especially important in California’s primary, which will take place in March. The Golden State is one of the most expensive places in the country to campaign in, due to its massive size and the expensive advertising rates in its major population centers, and the primary will take place on the same day as almost a dozen other states — so the state’s 2.4 million union members would be a powerful force for any candidate.

“A union endorsement means some resources, but the most important part of it is the boots on the ground,” said Steve Smith, a spokesman for the California Labor Federation, one of the hosts of the Sacramento dinner.

California’s largest unions typically participate in the endorsement process of their national affiliates and support the presidential candidate the national union chooses, although some groups in other states have broken ranks in the past. Endorsements aren’t expected to be decided on until later this year or early next year.

In 2016, most of the national unions backed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary — decisions that provoked some unrest from rank-and-file members who supported the more liberal Bernie Sanders. In response, several are working to make their endorsement processes more open to input from all members and involve them in the decision-making.

Many of the other top candidates in the race have strong union ties, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, who is expected to run.

Still, Harris has the closest relationships with the California labor movement, the largest in the country by number of members. She won broad support from the state’s biggest unions during her 2016 Senate race against fellow Democrat Rep. Loretta Sanchez, getting the backing of the state Labor Federation, SEIU, Teachers Association and AFSCME branches. Laphonza Butler, the former president of SEIU California, is one of Harris’ top political strategists, and Dolores Huerta, a longtime labor leader in the state, is one of her California campaign co-chairs.

In her speech, she focused on two of her union-friendly policy proposals: a massive tax cut for the middle class and a plan to invest $315 billion in federal funds to give teachers around the country a raise. Some of Harris’ biggest cheers of the night came when she vowed to pay for those plans by tearing up President Trump’s tax reform bill, which cut tax rates while focusing the largest benefits on corporations.

“On day one, we’re going to repeal that tax bill that they passed,” Harris said, arguing that it was weighed in favor of the wealthy. “They didn’t need that money. Our people need that money.”

Harris suggested that policies supporting the working class tend to get more scrutiny about how they’ll be paid for than policies helping the rich.

“These people talking about ‘how you’re going to pay for it,’ right — it’s funny how they bring up that conversation when you’re talking about figuring out how public policy can support working people,” she said.

Several labor leaders at the dinner said they liked the senator and were impressed with her campaign, even if it was too early to predict whether their unions would endorse her.

“She’s not afraid to call Trump out,” said Larry Yee, the secretary of Communication Workers of America Local 9410 in San Francisco. In 2016, he said, “we gave Bernie a chance,” but Sanders doesn’t have a lock on the union’s support this time.

Mel Breshears, the business manager of the AWIU 16 asbestos workers union in Benicia, said he was open-minded about the candidates and hoped to support “somebody who can go up and withstand the lies and bullsh** Trump is going to throw at them.”

“We need someone who can look him in the eye and say, ‘you’re a liar,’” Breshears said. “I know Kamala can do that.”