From left, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz celebrate after Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on Aug. 22 during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)TOPEKA — The Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska Conference of Teamsters endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz days after the International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse a presidential candidate in the November election.
The conference cited Harris’ Senate voting record, Walz’ commitment to working families and the middle class and the pair’s strong support of the labor movement as reasons to join hundreds of thousands of other union members in endorsing their campaign.
The conference is made up of more than 15 locals and two joint councils — one based in St. Louis and another in Kansas City, Missouri — that voted along with the conference’s executive board in favor of endorsing the Democratic ticket.
The Teamsters union is America’s largest, with 1.3 million members and nearly 2,000 affiliates across the country. The Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska Conference accounts for roughly 400,000 active and retired members, whose careers range from zookeepers to airline pilots, as the conference’s president, Mike Scribner, likes to put it.
“Union pride is strong in the heartland, and we need a president who is going to stand up to corporate greed and fight for the needs of our families and communities. The Harris-Walz team will do just that,” Scribner said in the Sept. 20 endorsement letter.
The brotherhood’s member polls favored President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race, but subsequent polls revealed majority support for former President Donald Trump.
“A lot of people get wound up with the social issues and the social platforms and social distractions. …That’s not where the Teamsters’ attention is focused,” Scribner told Kansas Reflector on Wednesday.
He lauded Harris’ 2021 tiebreaking vote that authorized $36 billion in pandemic-era funds to be invested in the Teamsters’ Central States Pension Plan in her role as Senate President.
“That saved thousands from poverty,” Scribner said.
In his mind, Harris’ vote carried real weight because of the gravity of a potentially failed multiemployer pension plan, which had been on the brink for about a decade, he said.
While breaking from the national group, the local Teamsters’ support of a Democratic ticket is on par with tradition. The union has endorsed the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 2000, exercising its vast network of workers. Many of them maintained employment, and even worked more than usual, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Scribner said.
“I don’t know if the average person realizes when you click a button on the computer, that’s probably a Teamster bringing what you ordered from start to finish,” he said.
The union announced its decision to refrain from endorsing a presidential candidate Sept. 18. It fielded criticism from its former president, and, in the days following, about a dozen locals and conferences endorsed Harris. Since the Missouri-Kansas-Nebraska conference announced its own endorsement, Scribner said he has heard input from “both sides of the fence.”
“We are the Teamsters in the heartland. We are representatives for those Teamsters, and an endorsement says just what it says,” Scribner said. “No more, no less.”
This article first appeared in the Kansas Reflector, a part of States Newsroom.
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