These Candidates Don’t Talk to Working People—They Are Working People: Claire Valdez, the New York state assemblymember now running to represent New York City’s 7th congressional district in the House of Representatives, joined a union long before she ever entered politics. It’s her history with unions that she credits with giving her the experience she needed to think about running for office in the first place. “I think my perspective as a political person really started with the fact that I was a worker and that I did not control my hours.… And that sense of kind of powerlessness is one that is shared by so much of the working class,” she told me in an interview earlier this year.
That changed when she started work at Columbia University, which was unionized, she said. “My union gave me—it really gave me—time,” she said. She started to use that time to learn about political organizing and think about the way she could help make workers’ lives better. That ultimately led to her race against Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, in the congressional primary in June, which she won by more than 20 points. The race was often portrayed as Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who backed her, versus the machine, socialism versus the establishment. But there was another way to frame the battle: the union member versus the political insider.
At least five other candidates are new to national politics this year but are running for seats in the House and Senate because of their experiences with unions. Like Valdez, their rhetoric is worker focused. They believe that their worker-led agenda is key to Democrats winning back some of the disillusioned middle-income voters who have flipped to President Trump or stopped showing up for elections at all. Earning their votes is essential for the Democrats to return to power. But the key question is, assuming the Democrats do return to power, will the presence of these union member legislators result in a governing agenda that really tries to deliver for working people?
First, these candidates have to win in November. Some are running in… https://newrepublic.com/article/216208/labor-union-candidates-midterm-elections-working-people