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      Amazon, Tesla and Meta among world’s top companies undermining democracy – report

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      Some of the world’s largest companies have been accused of undermining democracy across the world by financially backing far-right political movements, funding and exacerbating the climate crisis, and violating trade union rights and human rights in a report published on Monday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).Amazon, Tesla, Meta, ExxonMobil, Blackstone, Vanguard and Glencore are the corporations included in the report. The companies’ lobbying arms are attempting to shape global policy at the United Nations Summit of the Future in New York City on 22 and 23 September.At Amazon, the report notes the company’s size and role as the fifth largest employer in the world and the largest online retailer and cloud computing service, has had a profound impact on the industries and communities it operates within.“The company has become notorious for its union busting and low wages on multiple continents, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissions through its AWS data centres, corporate tax evasion, and lobbying at national and international level,” states the report.The report cites Amazon’s high injury rates in the US, the company challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), its efforts in Canada to overturn labor law, the banning of Amazon lobbyists from the European parliament for refusing to attend hearings on worker violations, and refusal to negotiate with unions in Germany, among other cases. Amazon has also funded far-right political groups’ efforts to undermine women’s rights and antitrust legislation, and its retail website has been used by hate groups to raise money and sell products.At Tesla, the report cites anti-union opposition by the company in the US, Germany, and Sweden; human rights violations within its supply chains; and Elon Musk’s personal opposition to unions and democracy, challenges to the NLRB in the US, and his support for the political leaders Donald Trump, Javier Milei in Argentina and Narendra Modi in India.The report cites Meta, the largest social media company in the world, for its vast role in permitting and enabling far-right propaganda and movements to use its platforms to grow members and garner support in the US and abroad. It also cited retaliation from the company for regulatory measures in Canada, and expensive lobbying efforts against laws to regulate data privacy.Glencore, the largest mining company in the world by revenue, was included in the report for its role in financing campaigns globally against Indigenous communities and activists.Blackstone, the private equity firm led by Stephen Schwarzman, a billionaire backer of Donald Trump, was cited in the report for its roles in funding far-right political movements, investments in fossil fuel projects and deforestation in the Amazon.“Blackstone’s network has spent tens of millions of dollars supporting politicians and political forces who promise to prevent or eliminate regulations that might hold it to account,” the report noted.The Vanguard Group was included in the report due to its role in financing some of the world’s most anti-democratic corporations. ExxonMobil was cited for funding anti-climate science research and aggressive lobbying against environmental regulations.Even in “robust democracies” workers’ demands “are overwhelmed by corporate lobbying operations, either in policymaking or the election in itself”, said Todd Brogan, director of campaigns and organizing at the ITUC.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is about power, who has it, and who sets the agenda. We know as trade unionists that unless we’re organized, the boss sets the agenda in the workplace, and we know as citizens in our countries that unless we’re organized and demanding responsive governments that actually meet the needs of people, it’s corporate power that’s going to set the agenda.“They’re playing the long game, and it’s a game about shifting power away from democracy at every level into one where they’re not concerned about the effects on workers – they’re concerned about maximizing their influence and their extractive power and their profit,” added Brogan. “Now is the time for international and multi-sectoral strategies, because these are, in many cases, multinational corporations that are more powerful than states, and they have no democratic accountability whatsoever, except for workers organized.”The ITUC includes labor group affiliates from 169 nations and territories around the world representing 191 million workers, including the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, and the Trades Union Congress in the UK.With 4 billion people around the world set to participate in elections in 2024, the federation is pushing for an international binding treaty being worked on by the Open-ended intergovernmental working group to hold transnational corporations accountable under international human rights laws. More

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      Teamsters decline to endorse election candidate – but claim majority backs Trump

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      The Teamsters International, which represents over 1.3 million workers, declined to endorse a candidate ahead of November’s presidential election – but released data suggesting most of its members backed Donald Trump over Kamala Harris.The union’s decision to not make an election endorsement, for the first time in almost three decades, comes in the wake of scrutiny of its president, Sean O’Brien, becoming the first Teamsters leader to address the the Republican national convention in July. John Palmer, vice-president at large at the Teamsters, called the decision to appear at the convention, “unconscionable” given Trump’s record opposing labor unions.Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, met with the Teamsters this week for a roundtable discussion prior to the decision. Trump and Joe Biden attended roundtable with the union earlier this year.“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,” O’Brien said in a statement on Wednesday. “We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries – and to honor our members’ right to strike – but were unable to secure those pledges.”Polling data released by the union ahead of the announcement showed that its members supported Biden over Trump, though more recent surveys conduct by the union revealed membership supported Trump over Harris.The Teamsters National Black Caucus endorsed Harris last month.In response to the non-endorsement, Teamsters against Trump, a grassroots group of Teamster members and retirees, announced they will expand campaigning efforts to elect Vice President Kamala Harris.The California Teamsters also came out on 18 September to endorse Harris in response to the Teamsters International’s lack of endorsement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“When it comes to my vote for President, as a proud Teamster there’s no contest. Donald Trump doesn’t give a damn about the working class. As President, Trump didn’t lift a finger to help Teamsters whose pensions were in danger. Instead, he installed his billionaire friends in the White House and did everything he could to stop workers from organizing into unions,” said James Larkin, a member of Teamsters Local 299 in Detroit, Michigan and member of the group, in a statement. More

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      ‘Democrats are losing’: a battle on EVs could cost Kamala Harris votes in Michigan

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      As the critical swing state of Michigan hangs in the balance, experts warn that Democrats’ poor messaging over the shift to electric vehicles could lose them the state in November’s election.“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one, thereby saving the US auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now,” Donald Trump told the Republican national convention in a speech this summer that would reach tens of millions of people.Despite his burgeoning friendship with Tesla’s Elon Musk, Trump has remained a consistent critic of EVs and battery-powered vehicles more generally. The messaging has resonated with many United Auto Workers (UAW) members, eroding Joe Biden’s support among union members in Michigan by as much as 25 points since the 2020 election.The claim that EVs require less labor is probably not true: multiple studies and industry executives have said it takes about as much or more labor to produce EVs. Still, the Biden-Harris campaign has not pushed that essential point, and in the process is losing the messaging war over EVs, imperiling Democrats’ chances in tightly contested Michigan as union support sputters, according to Bernie Porn, an Epic-MRA Michigan pollster.“Biden and Democrats are doing a lousy job on messaging [on EVs],” said Porn. “Democrats are losing support … but they’ve been silent.”Autoworker votes are critical to Michigan and other must-win upper midwest industrial swing states – Trump won there by a narrow 10,000 votes in 2016.Biden retook the state with broad union support four years later, but by late 2023, union members here preferred Trump over Biden by a 47-40 margin, Epic-MRA found. Following the UAW endorsement early this year, Biden’s support among unions bounced up to 52% – but still 13 points below the last election.About 55% of state residents are also opposed to the EV transition, polling found.Trump’s claim that the EV transition represents the US auto industry’s death knell began to deeply worry union members as Biden guided the nation into the EV transition via the billions of dollars of investment in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act.Trump regularly claims EVs require up to 40% less labor to make than gasoline cars, a statistic repeated by Brian Pannebecker, who backs Trump and is a former UAW member.Even with the evidence that EVs take the same or more time to produce, skepticism among many autoworkers persists, he said.“Of course we’re not going like that,” Pannebecker said. “We’d be suicidal or stupid if we did.”But Trump’s claims are not true, and the job-creating power of EVs is “the biggest secret in politics”, said Mike Murphy, a Republican with the EV Politics Project, a non-profit that pushes for stronger EV policy.Its recent focus groups and polling found people across the political spectrum are more supportive of EVs when they learn that it creates jobs, and EV Politics Project is planning to air a television commercial that hits on that point in the coming weeks.“I don’t know why the Biden-Harris administration has been so bad at telling the story,” Murphy added. “They need to go on the offense.”Democrats could point to recent General Motors statements on the issue.“We’ve done our own analysis at General Motors, and there are other studies that have affirmed that the employee base needed in the future for EV production is very similar to what’s needed for a comparable [internal combustion] vehicle today,” GM executive Gerald Johnson said.GM is building a massive new battery plant in Michigan, which has the most announced battery production nationwide. At least seven plants have opened or are in the works, and UAW leadership has been supportive of the EV expansion.A spokesperson for UAW said support for the EV transition among union members was strong, dismissing opposition within its ranks as rooted in partisan politics.Parsing EV productionThe idea that EV production requires fewer hours can be traced back to several out-of-context comments made by auto executives and companies underestimating the time demands in 2017, a Heatmap analysis found.Trump has run with the comments, and the messaging has bounced around the echo chamber without much media scrutiny. On its face the claim makes sense – EVs require fewer parts in their powertrain, so it takes less time to assemble.The powertrain is what propels the car, and in gas-powered vehicles it contains over 1,000 parts that make up the engine and transmission. An EV powertrain is seemingly simpler – just a few hundred components with batteries, electric motors and power management systems.But industry observers say the claims about labor hours seem to omit battery packs. And when every component and the complexity of the EV powertrain production process is factored in, it takes about the same or more time to put it together, a recent Carnegie Mellon study found.The research used shop floor level data and interviews with autoworkers at nine plants to determine how long it takes to make each EV powertrain part. The researchers found EV powertrains require about two to three times more labor to produce than gas – up to 11 worker hours per gas powertrain compared with up to 24 worker hours for a battery powertrain.“You need to unpack the black box of the production process to figure out whether the assembly time reduction was outweighed by an increase in fabrication complexity,“ said Christophe Combemale, a study co-author. “We can say very strongly at the moment the evidence suggests it takes as many or perhaps more labor hours to produce [an EV powertrain].”Recent University of Michigan research took a different approach. It examined output at three factories where EV production replaced gas production. It found output is higher at gas plants, meaning more hours are required to build EVs – a former California GM/Toyota plant produced 80 vehicles per person per year, while a Tesla plant now in the facility averages 30.Researchers at the Boston Consulting Group came to a similar conclusion in an analysis that looked at an entire car’s assembly. It also noted time-consuming complexities in EV production, like the battery pack’s heavy weight, which requires the rest of the car to be much lighter than a gas-powered vehicle. The Tesla Model S battery pack weighs more than half a ton, which is offset by using aluminum instead of steel, as is standard with gas vehicles, the paper notes.However, aluminum is “trickier to work with in a factory” because it is comparatively weak, the paper states, demanding expensive adjustments like spot welding to shore up its strength. The installation of the charging unit, additional wiring, battery loading and alignment all require time not needed in gas assembly.“This is a significant change for an industry that has spent more than 100 years developing and improving engine manufacturing and vehicle assembly to the highest degrees of efficiency,” the paper states.CaveatsAs the nascent EV production process matures, automakers will find efficiencies that will reduce the manufacturing time. Meanwhile, while the EV market is growing, sales have been slower than expected, and some Michigan plants have recently laid off workers or scaled back employment figures.In his critique of EVs, Pannebecker, the Trump-backing former UAW member, pointed out the most obvious caveat to research showing they take more hours: batteries and their components largely are not made in the US at the moment, so they are not of use to the UAW.“No matter which way you look at it, it’s a losing proposition for autoworkers,” Pannebecker said.As much as 80% of lithium ion batteries are estimated to be produced in China, but that is changing. A slew of battery plants are scheduled to come online in the US in the coming years in addition to more than 30 already operating, and five of those will be in Michigan.Even if those plants are built, Pannebecker noted, many of them are not unionized and only pay $15-$18 an hour. Near Youngstown, Ohio, an Ultium battery plant near the once-storied GM Lordstown plant suffers from high turnover because of the low pay that workers there say is in line with a local Waffle House.But that is also changing. Late last year and early this year the UAW made battery plants a priority in its negotiations with automakers, and the plants’ workers can now unionize.Meanwhile, the Chips and Science Act aimed at reshoring the semiconductor industry that produces critical components to EVs is also helping shift component production to the US. Combemale said there is some potential for autoworkers to be retrained or take on jobs in semiconductor plants or other higher tech settings than a shop floor.Still, this broad narrative does not seem to be reaching many Michiganders, whether in a union or not. The most recent polling shows only 56% of Michigan union members approve of the EV transition – far below the 74% of Democrats who approve of it. Meanwhile, union members’ families disapprove by a 51-45% margin, and support among independent voters is even lower.But it’s not too late to change the messaging for this election, and into the future, said EV Politics’ Murphy. Part of the problem may be generational within union ranks – older guys are less supportive because they won’t be around as the EV transition progresses, Murphy said.Democrats need to stop making EVs an environmental issue, which will “divide the voters in half”, Murphy said, and instead push the job creation narrative. His focus groups found an up to 19-point improvement on EV approval rating when messaging focused on the latter.“It’s a very powerful way to reframe the argument,” Murphy said. “It’s one of the best bragging rights they’ve got. This isn’t hard, it’s just a story no one knows.” More

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      Biden to join Harris on campaign trail for first time since dropping out of race

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      Joe Biden will join Kamala Harris on the campaign trail for the first time on Monday since standing aside six weeks ago to let the vice-president claim the presidential nomination following a poor debate performance.The pair were due to appear together in Pittsburgh in the vital swing state of Pennsylvania at a Labour Day event aimed at cementing support from trade unions, a key Democrat constituency and a bedrock of Biden’s support as he has styled himself as “the most pro-union president in US history”.Harris is expected to assume that mantle with a pledge to oppose the sale of US Steel – which is headquartered in Pittsburgh – to the Japanese company, Nippon. Biden has already voiced his opposition to the proposed sale.Before her arrival in Pittsburgh, a Harris campaign official said she would “say that US Steel should remain domestically-owned and operated and stress her commitment to always have the backs of American steel workers.”Harris’s commitment represents one of the few specific policy promises she has made since her ascent to top of the Democratic ticket following Biden’s 21 July announcement that he was abandoning his re-election bid.Biden has since endorsed Harris and the pair appeared briefly together on stage at last month’s Democratic national convention in Chicago.While the president has spent the last two weeks holidaying in California and at his home in Delaware, he is expected to campaign for Harris – focusing in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin with a high concentration of white working-class voters whose allegiance may be crucial in November.Harris has promised “a new way forward” while loyally adhering to the Biden’s policies, treading a thin line between distancing herself from his administration’s perceived economic failings – particularly on inflation – while tying herself to its success stories.The emphasis on Monday appeared likely to mainly express her continued adherence to Biden, who became the first president to appear on a picket line last September when he joined striking car workers in Michigan, another crucial battleground state, in a show of support for the United Auo Workers (UAW) union.Monday’s event is expected to be attended by local and national leaders of major unions including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the United Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO, the main US trade union body. Also expected were Bob Casey, the Democratic senator for Pennsylvania who is running for re-election, and the state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, who Harris considered as her running mate before eventually choosing Tim Walz.Earlier, the vice-president visited Michigan – also a union stronghold – for an event in Detroit, where she was to be joined by the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and two other union leaders, Shawn Fain of the UAW, and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers.Polls show Harris and Donald Trump running neck-and-neck in both Pennsylvania and Michigan, despite holding a small but consistent lead over the Republican nominee in national surveys. Both states are considered part of the Democrats’ “blue wall”, along with Wisconsin. It is the outcome in these states, plus a small number of other battleground states in the south and south-west, rather than the national vote total that is likely to determine the winner in November’s election under the US state-by-state electoral college system.Trump has also pitched for union support and has sought the endorsement of the Teamsters union, whose head, Sean O’Brien, addressed July’s Republican national convention. However, JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, was booed last week when he spoke at a conference of the International Association of Firefighters and claimed to be part of “the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history”. More

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      More than 10,000 US hotel workers strike on Labor Day weekend

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      Thousands of US hotel workers went on strike on Sunday for improved pay and conditions in a dispute likely to disrupt many Labor Day weekend holiday travelers, amid union warnings that industrial action could escalate.More than 10,000 workers walked off the job at hotels in Boston, Seattle, Honolulu, Kauai and Greenwich, Connecticut, as well as the Californian cities of San Francisco, Sand Diego and San Jose after contract talks with the establishments’ owners collapsed.The Unite Here union, which represents workers in hotels, casinos and airports across the US and Canada, warned that staff in other city were ready to join the strike.“Strikes have also been authorised and could begin at any time,” a union statement said, adding that hotels in Baltimore, Providence, Oakland, New Haven could be affected.Staff are demanding wage increases and the reversal of pandemic era job cuts that union organisers say has increased the workload of remaining workers and imposed “painful” working conditions.“The hotel industry has rebounded from the pandemic, and room rates are at record highs,” Gwen Mills, Unite Here’s international president, said in a statement. “But hotel workers can’t afford to live in the cities that they welcome guests to. Too many hotel workers have to work two or sometimes three jobs in order to make ends meet.“We won’t accept a ‘new normal’ where hotel companies profit by cutting their offerings to guests and abandoning their commitments to workers.”The union said that, as of Sunday morning, the strike had impacted 24 cities with a total of 23,000 hotel rooms.It was taking place on a weekend which was expected to be the busiest on Labour Day records, according to Transport Security Administration forecasts.Unite Here, which has more than 275,000 members, has accused the hotel industry of using cutbacks triggered by Covid-related lockdowns to permanently cut staff and reduce guest services.It has asked traveling guests at affected hotels to cancel their visit and demand refunds.The strike, which is scheduled to last three days, follows months of talks between workers and the Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Omni hotel chains.Hyatt said it was disappointed by the decision to strike. “We look forward to continuing to negotiate fair contracts and recognise the contributions of Hyatt employees,” said Michael D’Angelo, the firm’s head of labour relations. More

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      Democrats can win this election by championing the working class | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      One of the most compelling speeches at last week’s Democratic national convention wasn’t followed by balloons. Delivered just a few hours before Kamala Harris’s primetime address, it came from a man with – until now, anyway – zero name recognition. John Russell is a mulleted tree-stump grinder turned activist journalist from rural Ohio. He seemed a bit of a misfit next to glamorous speakers like Oprah and the guy who played the president on Scandal. But on the final night in Chicago, Russell took the stage to give what my colleague Bhaskar Sunkara called “the most radical speech” in the convention’s history.His blistering remarks cut through the convention’s fever dream to deliver a necessary wake-up call. He warned about the working class’s political disillusionment. He demanded that Democrats reclaim their heritage as fearless defenders of labor. And he issued ambitious prescriptions for action on everything from a living wage to climate crisis. On that last issue, he reminded the gathered delegates that environmental degradation isn’t just a matter of coastal (elite) flooding, but of strip mining and poisoned water in flyover country. Perhaps most impressively, he spoke all this truth to power in only two minutes. As he said himself: “It is our moment to live up to. Let’s get after it.”This barn burner reminded the Democratic party that elevating voices like Russell’s for just one night in August won’t cut it: the Harris campaign needs to center heartland populism all the way through November.Such an emphasis has become even more imperative with JD Vance’s ascension to the No 2 spot on the Republican ticket. Though doughnuts may baffle him, this native son of Appalachia does have a knack for enticing Rust belt voters with a menu of faux-populist policies. From his support for unions to his endorsement of Lina Khan, the US Federal Trade Commission chair, Vance’s words make it seem like the only thing he despises more than cat ladies is corporations. But as Russell pointed out, Vance’s work for Peter Thiel and his fealty to Donald Trump prove his true loyalties lie with crypto miners, not coal miners.Authentic populists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can certainly counter-signal Vance’s siren song. Sanders, for his part, delivered a typically rousing address at the DNC, calling on his fellow Democratic leaders to “stand up to wealth and power and deliver justice for people at home and abroad”.The Democrats’ populist bench extends beyond elected officials, too. The night before Sanders’s remarks, Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers president, appeared onstage in a red T-shirt that declared “Trump Is A Scab.” Though Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters president, had made a tentative courtship of the right by speaking at the Republican convention in July, Fain affirmed that labor’s true home remains with the left.But no one can rebut the Hillbilly Elegist more effectively than on-the-ground Appalachians like Russell. He reports on heartland labor issues for a progressive news outlet called More Perfect Union, enabling him to connect with the very workers who could swing races up and down the ballot. A video that played before his convention remarks showed him meeting with construction workers in rural Tennessee. They had just joined a union for the first time, but it may have also been the first time they met a Democrat who shared their tribulations.And Russell isn’t the only self-described redneck trying to build a grassroots movement. Beth Howard, for example, is organizing other coal miners’ daughters in eastern Kentucky on behalf of a program called Showing Up For Racial Justice. It aims to mobilize predominantly white communities in the south to combat racism and classism alike. And in the Central time zone, Midwest Academy continues to pump out progressive organizers who know what’s the matter with Kansas and how to fix it. Founded 51 years ago to check a different surge of rightwing populism, Midwest Academy has become the training ground for blue activists in red states. Its graduates would make mighty canvassers for Harris.Joe Biden has made headway in reclaiming the working class as the Democratic base. He has declared himself the most pro-union president ever, and his legislative accomplishments undoubtedly make him the best ally to labor in the White House since at least Lyndon Johnson. Last year, More Perfect Union even helped connect Biden with striking autoworkers, opening the way for him to make history as the first president to join a picket line. Harris would do well to follow her boss’s lead and embrace John Russell and his fellow activists – not just as surrogates, but advisers.To paraphrase Russell, this is Harris’s moment to live up to – or live down.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has contributed to the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times. More

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      ‘We know who built this country’: Walz courts union workers in first solo event

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      Tim Walz held his first solo campaign event since being selected as Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential nominee on Tuesday, rallying union members in Los Angeles and denouncing Donald Trump’s record on labor rights.The Minnesota governor’s appearance, at an event hosted by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, was the first in a five-state fundraising campaign as Walz ramps up support for the still-young Democratic ticket.Speaking to thousands of union members in a darkened auditorium, Walz said he and Harris will support workers by bringing collective bargaining and other protections to “every state in the union”. The 1.4-million-member union has endorsed Harris.“We know exactly who built this country,” Walz said. “People in this room built the middle class.”He emphasized his and Harris’s history of supporting worker protections, including appearances that both candidates have made on picket lines and the ban Minnesota passed on captive audience meetings during his tenure as governor. Walz said that he was the “first union member on a presidential ticket since Ronald Regan”, but promised: “I won’t lose my way.” (Trump was a member of the Screen Actors Guild before resigning in 2021.)Walz then pivoted to warn them of what the future might look like for workers if the former president and his running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, are elected, saying: “They see the world very differently then we do.”“The only thing those two guys know about working people is how to work to take advantage of them,” Walz said. “Every single chance they’ve gotten they’ve waged war on workers.”He described a future where bargaining rights, overtime pay and other protections would be cut, referencing steps that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 outlines for restricting worker rights under a second Trump presidency.The Trump campaign has also courted union support. When Trump accepted the Republican nomination last month, he said he would rescue the auto industry from “complete obliteration”.However, this morning the United Auto Workers union also filed federal unfair labor practice charges against Trump and Elon Musk over comments the two made during a live stream on X, which included threats to fire workers for going on strike.“You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump told Musk. “I mean, I look at what you do,” Trump said. “You walk in, you say, you want to quit? They go on strike, I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that’s OK, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone.”Walz concluded by referencing his own record of service, and attacks Republicans have made on his military service. “I’m proud to have served my country and I always will be,” he said.On Tuesday Walz also addressed a fundraiser in Newport Beach, and plans to speak in Denver and Boston tomorrow, before heading to Newport, Rhode Island, and Southampton, New York, on Thursday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt a fundraiser at the Balboa Bay Resort in Newport Beach on Tuesday, the Orange County Register reported, Walz peppered his 30-minute appearance “with Midwest jokes and self-deprecating quips”.“I couldn’t be more surprised if I woke up with my head stapled to the carpet,” he told an attendee who asked whether he was surprised to be selected as the vice-presidential nominee, before refocusing on his running mate.“You know better than anybody in this state what we’ve got in the vice-president. She’s found her voice,” Walz saidWalz also noted that his daughter, Hope, was in attendance at the Orange county event, before sharing his family’s story of conceiving Hope through IVF treatments.Also in attendance were multiple California Democratic house members, including representatives Nanette Barragán of South Gate, Mike Levin of San Juan Capistrano and Katie Porter of Irvine. Levin, who had been one of the first to call on President Joe Biden to abandon his re-election campaign, told the Register: “I want to win the election in November and defeat Donald Trump. Vice-President Harris and Governor Walz give us a great chance to do just that.”Donors in Newport Beach, one of California’s wealthier and more conservative regions, have contributed $770,000 to Trump’s campaign this election cycle; compared with $145,000 for the Democratic campaigns, the Register reports, citing Federal Election Commission reports.Walz’s fundraising tour will continue in Denver and Boston tomorrow, before heading to Newport, Rhode Island, and Southampton, New York, on Thursday. More

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      ‘He has a proven track record’: behind Tim Walz’s appeal to workers

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      Vice-presidential picks have little effect on who wins a presidential election, many political scientists say. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s choice as her running mate, could prove the exception to that rule. Not least because of his track record of successfully appealing to working people.Angela Ferritto, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, voiced confidence that Walz will help the vice-president win in three pivotal states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin: “I strongly believe that Governor Walz will help the ticket. He has a proven track record of accomplishing things for working people.”Ferritto noted that as Minnesota’s governor, Walz enacted paid sick days, guaranteed more protection to construction workers against wage theft, and gave teachers greater negotiating power “over class sizes so they can give students the attention they need”.Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster, said Walz had an underappreciated strength that is political gold. “He gets policies out of the left-right divide and gets people to agree that this is the right thing to do,” she said. “Who’s for large class size? Who’s for poorly paid teachers? Who’s not for letting Mom and Dad have time with their new baby? He has a way of taking ideology out of policies and making them seem like things we can get together on.”Steve Rosenthal, a political strategist and former political director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation, said Walz had another important trait – he is the type of candidate blue-collar workers would be happy to have a beer with. Walz likes to hunt and fish, he was long a union member while a teacher, and his financial disclosure forms show he owns no stocks or bonds.“What the two parties’ vice-presidential picks say is that both sides recognize the critical nature of winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania,” Rosenthal said. “I think Walz is a huge addition in those states.”He explained that people normally focus on who is at the top of the ticket, but “to the extent Harris has someone who can represent her in those three states, he can be a big help. He can camp out in those states. He can walk a picket line and go to union halls. He can be a huge plus.”While history shows that vice-presidents don’t often move voters to the polls, with Walz things “could be a little different”, said Lake, noting that Harris’s selection of Walz was getting huge attention partly because it was the biggest, early decision of her presidential campaign. “I think Walz definitely helps in terms of the blue wall strategy [of winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin]. It’s great to have someone from the midwest on the ticket. His story is great and complements hers.”On paper, political experts say, Walz should be an alluringly strong running mate because he served in the army national guard for 24 years, was a high school teacher for two decades and coached his football team to a state championship. Moreover, Walz, a 60-year-old father of two, grew up on a farm in a Nebraska town of just 300 people.Ever since Walz’s selection was announced, he and Harris have trumpeted his rural roots and decades of public service, while Donald Trump and his campaign have rushed to portray Walz as “dangerously liberal” and in other unflattering ways. In recent days, the Harris and Trump campaigns have been rushing to put forward clashing definitions of Walz, and which side prevails in defining him to the nation could have a major effect on how much Walz boosts the Democratic ticket.“A handful of national polls show that 60% and up of voters say they don’t know enough about Walz to have an opinion,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Milwaukee-based Marquette Law School Poll. “The Republicans are pushing hard to paint him in a negative way. Things are wide open as to whether he will be defined as a Minnesota dad or the socialist governor of Minnesota.”The Trump campaign’s attacks “are really exploding on him”, Franklin said, adding, “If Walz deals with them effectively, more power to him. If he ends up being swiftboated, just like John Kerry was, that’s not so good.”JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has accused Walz of leaving the military early to avoid serving in Iraq, but Walz says he retired from the national guard in 2005 to run for Congress, months before his artillery unit received orders to deploy to Iraq.Many Democrats voice confidence that Walz will beat back the Trump-Vance attacks and be a boon to the ticket. They point to his superb communications skills – he’s down to earth, clever and humorous, and he came up with the term “weird” to describe and deride Trump and Vance. Many Democrats applaud the policies he ushered in as Minnesota governor, including 12 weeks’ paid family and medical leave, free breakfasts and lunches for public school students, strong protections for reproductive freedom, and free college tuition at public universities for students from families making less than $80,000 a year.Even though studies have shown that vice-presidential picks usually affect election results by only a small margin, Walz’s addition to the ticket – and his midwestern, pro-worker bona fides – could make a crucial difference in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won each of those states by less than 1% in 2016.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn June, Emerson College Polling and the Hill did a poll in Minnesota that found that Walz was plus 12 with women, minus nine with men, and plus 11 with 18-to-29-year-olds. Spencer Kimball, director of Boston-based Emerson College Polling said Walz could certainly help Harris attract and motivate younger voters. “Younger voters had moved away from Biden, not necessarily to Trump, maybe to a third party,” Kimball said. “What we’ve seen recently is the youth vote moving toward Harris, and I think Walz helps double down on that. The youth vote is one of the Democratic party’s bases. To get young people excited about the race is a potential gamechanger and can help reset the election map.”With regard to the three key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Ken Kollman, director of the University of Michigan’s center for political studies, said that there was “a big mother lode” of votes in Detroit and that voter turnout in Philadelphia and Milwaukee was hugely important. “The national election may very well hinge on turnout in those areas,” he said, adding that he didn’t think Walz would make much difference in those three cities.Walz could prove important, however, Kollman said, in making overtures to Democrats and blue-collar voters who have gravitated to Trump. “There is a group of Trump supporters who are pretty liberal on issues, which is one of the paradoxes of Trump’s appeal – people who actually rely on or believe in government support and active government intervention in their lives, their industry or their company.”Kollman said that Walz, because of his rural background and pro-worker record, “might be able to get some of them to break away from Trump. That remains a big question.”Lake, the pollster, agreed that Walz “can provide an opening” to voters leaning toward Trump, but said that Walz’s personal appeal alone could not win over many Trump-leaning voters. Lake said the “whole ticket has to improve” its efforts to reach them and persuade them.Ferritto of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO voiced optimism about Walz’s ability to win over Trump voters. “He flipped a congressional district that borders Iowa from red to blue,” she said. “He wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that unless he appealed to blue-collar voters.”Some, perhaps many, blue-collar Trump supporters will never hear Walz’s or Harris’s message, Ferritto acknowledged, because they are inundated from one side. “But I believe there are blue-collar voters who are willing to listen,” she said. “They want to hear facts. They want to hear about achieving real results. I do believe that Walz can reach those voters.” More