Autonomous presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg gestures while speaking during the kickoff of his “Get It Done Express” bus tour at the Dollarhide Community Center in Compton, California on February 3, 2020.
Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty Images
Mike Bloomberg is worrying to position himself as a moderate candidate who has the resources and record to unite the Democratic Party to take on President Donald Trump this go to pieces.
But despite his recent surge in polls, that might be a difficult task, as he remains a divisive figure among a party historically important to Democrats — labor unions.
To be sure, unions’ support or opposition may not make or break Democratic candidacies this course, as key constituencies within the party are merely looking for the best chance to win in November. The influential Nevada Culinary Workers’ conjunction declined to support any of the Democratic candidates ahead of the debate Wednesday night and the state’s caucuses this Saturday. Nor is there a shoot through front-runner for endorsement of the 12.5 million-member AFL-CIO, as former Vice President Joe Biden, once the would-be union lovely, continues to fall in the polls.
Yet the chances of Bloomberg becoming a champion of organized labor early in the primary season sway seem small, despite his recent unveiling of some union-friendly policy proposals. Bloomberg’s media company, Bloomberg LP, is not unionized, albeit the legal research firm it acquired in 2011, Bloomberg BNA, does have a union.
During his three-term run as New York mayor, Bloomberg’s unsentimental tactics earned him a mixed record with unions: He had his share of enemies and allies, as well as people who straddled the separate.
As the city’s finances took a hit from an economic crisis and a ballooning deficit, Bloomberg targeted union contracts and shelves as a path to financial stabilization. He ended his 12-year run on Dec. 31, 2013, with a balanced budget. But he had lost the support of New York’s biggest municipal public employee union, District Council 37, which had backed his first run. The union represents tradesmen in hospitals, schools libraries and city colleges.
Other union criticisms of Bloomberg persist. Patrick Lynch, the president of the Oversee Benevolent Association, which represents 24,000 sworn New York Police Department members, has called Bloomberg’s apologies for stop-and-frisk “too tiny, too late.” The union has said Bloomberg’s policy worsened its relations with communities and made police officers the quarry of hatred.
Bloomberg has also drawn anger from the teachers unions for his support of charter schools, which the organizes say drain public schools and educators of resources. After Bloomberg announced his run for president late last year, the Shared Federation of Teachers declared in a newspaper distributed to its more than 190,000 members that under his watch in New York “accessible school educators felt disrespected and demoralized” while “students were shortchanged.”
His charitable activities as a private resident have proven equally as divisive. Through Bloomberg Philanthropies, he’s continued to support private education, as well as a coal-free expected, both controversial decisions for certain union members. Those same activities, though, have also be worthy ofed him allies.
Despite the teachers union’s past issues with Bloomberg, the president of its parent union, the 1.7 million-member American Association of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, recently told the Hill she believes Bloomberg has a chance of “going all the way.” Bloomberg Philanthropies has pledged legal tender to support low-income students. The AFT, meantime, has partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun-safety advocacy group that Bloomberg aided found.
Weingarten and Bloomberg shared a byline in a USA Today editorial in 2018 acknowledging that while they arrange butted heads over the best way to improve schools, they share a focus on fair pay for teachers.
The country’s portliest federation of unions, the AFL-CIO, is also split on Bloomberg, a person familiar with the union’s thinking said, entreating anonymity in order to speak freely about union dynamics.
There are others, though, who are in favor of Bloomberg’s candor and candid approach. Some are focused on simply finding a candidate they think can win.
“I’ve certainly seen people express concerns apropos Bloomberg,” said Thea Mei Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute, who previously served as deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO. “But they’re also taxing to figure out who can beat Trump, and having money is always useful in the election.”
The Bloomberg campaign did not respond to a request for say discuss for this article.
A question of influence
The Democratic field is as fractured as the union voter bloc.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., an forthright proponent of organized labor, has already irked some unions with his support for “Medicare for All” and his opposition to mountaintop coal mining. Biden, who has ready-to-wear much of his political appeal to his blue-collar roots, failed to secure the endorsement of the influential Nevada Culinary Workers’ confederacy ahead of the state’s caucuses.
The other major Democratic candidates — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., former South Flexure, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. — all have various levels of support among marrying members. But none have been able to break free as the clear front-runner nor allayed sufficient concern they can worn out Trump.
Trump, a Republican billionaire, nonetheless won the presidency in 2016 by winning over large swaths of union colleagues and blue-collar workers. That happened despite his rival, Hillary Clinton, winning the endorsement of the AFL-CIO.
Meanwhile, fading union membership and economic uncertainty have created schisms between unions representing workers from efforts such as mining, teaching and retail. That fracture was made clear with the recent United States-Mexico-Canada Pact, a NAFTA update that earned the support of the AFL-CIO, despite concerns several unions publicly expressed just about the deal.
The AFL-CIO’s endorsement doesn’t seem to have the impact it used to have. In 2016, the organization endorsed Hillary Clinton, but she one beat Trump among union households 51%-43%. In 2012, Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney total union households 58%-40%.
It’s also unclear whether the AFL-CIO will arrive at a two-thirds majority vote coerced for the group to endorse any candidate, the person familiar with the AFL-CIO’s thinking acknowledged. The AFL-CIO’s member unions encompass the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and United Auto Wage-earners.
The AFL-CIO has only once before opted against any endorsement at all. In 1972, it refrained from endorsing either President Richard Nixon or Representative Sen. George McGovern for the presidency, put off by McGovern’s opposition to the Vietnam War.
Tim Schlittner, a spokesperson for the AFL-CIO, said the group is “fully convinced” in its ability to reach a consensus to support a candidate as it works through a “strong field.” Schlittner also disagreed that the AFL-CIO is broke or losing influence, calling such characterizations “overblown,” and saying it “comes together like a family” when it have need of to.
Bloomberg’s resources
Given Bloomberg’s $60 billion net worth and his extensive support network, he might be able to run a rough campaign without the biggest union’s endorsement in the primary or in the general election. He has already shelled out $400 million on ads. The departed New York mayor is polling in third place nationally among Democrats, within striking distance of Biden, after starting in seventh advance when he jumped into the race, according to a Real Clear Politics polling average. Sanders is the leader.
Leagues’ strongest weapon in elections is their ability to canvas and rally voters, yet Bloomberg has put together a towering campaign manoeuvring that has broken records with its ad spending and promotion, as well as an army of operatives. Meantime, through his private alms-giving, he has built up a network of mayors that has brought in scores of endorsements in swing states such as Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
He is also wave action out policies that seem more union-friendly than his track record in New York would suggest, even as the U.S. watches down a $1 trillion deficit.
This weekend, he unveiled a plan that would raise the federal reduced wage, strengthen union protections and “protect workers’ pensions.” It marks a contrast from his time as mayor. Then, he contend persuaded that a right to unionize must be met with a reduction in union pension and benefit costs.
His plan to rein in Mad Street, released Tuesday, proposed tougher regulation on banks despite his previous criticism of bank regulation inflicted under the Dodd-Frank Act.
A K-12 education plan — which will likely address the question of school privatization — will be unshackled in the next few weeks, a campaign spokesperson told CNBC.
These proposals show, for all of his wealth and firepower, that Bloomberg capability think he could use a little union muscle to help him win it all, if he clinches the nomination.
“He certainly has a considerable buffer as a result of the resources he has, but a buffer and a superior insulation are two very different things,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor economist at the University of California at Berkeley. “Unions distinguish how to organize, they can take phone calls — and in an internet age and an age of limited TV ads, there’s still something to that.”