Puppet Masters Fail to Reelect Valued Puppets

Big Labor boss Randi Weingarten embracing anti-Right to Work U.S. Senate incumbents Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Bob Casey (Pa., inset).
Big Labor bosses like teacher union czarina Randi Weingarten embraced anti-Right to Work U.S. Senate incumbents Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Bob Casey (Pa., inset). But 2024’s blue-collar voters did not (Credit: OCSEA / AFSCME; Inset: Bill Burke / Page One Photography / AFL-CIO / Wikimedia Commons).

Veteran Big Labor Ohio, Pennsylvania Senators Ousted by Voters

After strategizing about how to run their 2024 re-election campaigns in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Donald Trump was considered respectively the favorite and highly competitive in the race for the White House, union-label Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Bob Casey (Pa.) opted to stick to their usual pattern. 

That is, all the way up to Election Day, the two three-term Democrat incumbents did exactly what top union bosses inside the D.C. Beltway told them to do. 

Loudly and repeatedly proclaiming their fealty to the union hierarchy and its coercive legislative agenda was the smart thing for Mr. Brown and Mr. Casey to do, according to Big Labor apologists in the establishment media. 

But in 2024, this strategy didn’t pay off for either one of them. 

Throughout their re-election campaigns, published polls featuring demographic cross-tabs clearly indicated Sens. Brown and Casey would never get the votes of the majority of blue-collar employees and their family members, of all races and ethnicities combined. 

Nevertheless, compulsory-unionism mouthpieces in the legacy media lauded again and again the faux “working-class appeal” of these two Big Labor puppets. 

In late May, for example, Mr. Brown and Mr. Casey were two of six union-label senators up for reelection in 2024 applauded by the New York Times’ David Leonhardt for their supposed sensitivity to blue-collar concerns. (None of the six ultimately carried a majority of his or her state’s working-class voters.)

Most Working-Class Buckeyes, Keystoners Voted Against Union-Endorsed Incumbents 

And in late October, barely over a week before Election Day, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne uncritically cited Mr. Brown’s contention that his “competitiveness” in an “increasingly red state” came down to “standing up and showing up for workers.” 

Unfortunately for Mr. Brown, Mr. Dionne, and Mr. Leonhardt, a solid majority of working-class voters in Ohio and every other 2024 Senate battleground state simply don’t agree with their understanding of what constitutes “showing up for workers.” 

According to the National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll cited by news organizations like CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC, among the 59% of Ohio voters last year living in households where no one has a bachelor’s degree or more education, a 55% to 42% majority favored GOP challenger Bernie Moreno over Mr. Brown. 

This working-class bloc clearly made the difference in securing for Mr. Moreno a solid four percentage-point victory among the entire electorate. 

In Pennsylvania, the NEP exit poll similarly shows voters in blue-collar households backed Republican nominee David McCormick over Mr. Casey by a 55% to 41% margin. Without these voters, Mr. Casey would have won easily. Instead, his re-election bid failed. (As this Newsletter edition goes to press, a recount of the Pennsylvania race is underway, but it is highly unlikely the bottom-line outcome will change.)

Union Bosses and RankAnd-File Voters Don’t See Eye to Eye 

National Right to Work Committee Vice President Greg Mourad commented: 

“As far as Big Labor politicians like Sherrod Brown and Bob Casey are concerned, they get to be called ‘working-class’ because they are enthusiastically backed by top union bigwigs like AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, AFSCME President Lee Saunders, and NEA President Becky Pringle. 

“But the reality is that union officials and rank-and-file workers don’t have the same values. 

“Big Labor favors onerous tax and regulatory policies that hurt businesses of all sizes and suppress income and job growth. But blue-collar voters tend, to a much greater extent than their white-collar counterparts, to value expanding job opportunities over other concerns. 

“Of course, Big Labor’s #1 goal is the elimination of Right to Work protections for employees. To please their union-boss puppet masters, Mr. Brown and Mr. Casey both cosponsored the so-called ‘PRO’ Act, which would effectively override state Right to Work laws and impose forced union dues and fees nationwide. And Mr. Casey voted against a national Right to Work amendment when it came up in the Senate HELP Committee in 2023. 

“But blue-collar voters completely disagree with Big Labor on this critical issue. As a recent survey by RMG Research, commissioned by the Committee last spring, shows, 80% of Americans who don’t hold a bachelor’s degree support the Right to Work principle. 

“The bottom line is, it isn’t ‘proworker’ for a politician to kowtow to Big Labor. Just ask workers themselves!”


This article was originally published in our monthly newsletter. Go here to access previous newsletter posts.

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