A national labor watchdog presented seven Democratic candidates with awards recognizing their record of advancing union interests.
The National Right to Work Committee "honored" five Democratic senators and two Senate candidates with a commemorative plaque recognizing their advocacy on behalf of union interests. The organization presented the Union Brass award to senators Bill Nelson (Fla.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), and Tammy Baldin (Wisc.), as well as Democratic nominees Rep. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Rep. Jacky Rosen of Nevada. The honor recognizes politicians for their "efforts to help the Union Brass to keep American workers in chains."
"These incumbents have been in Big Labor’s corner for their entire careers," committee vice president Greg Mourad said in a statement. "Of course, public records show these candidates have received hundreds of thousands of forced-dues dollars in contributions, support, and endorsements from Big Labor."
Mourad visited the five senators' Capitol Hill offices on Tuesday to hand deliver the commemorative trophy—a pair of golden handcuffs affixed to a plaque. The award pales in comparison to the campaign war-chests the candidates have amassed from labor organizations over the courses of their careers. The seven Democrats have taken in more than $8 million from Big Labor, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Rep. Rosen, making her first senatorial run, has received about $250,000, while Rep. Sinema has received nearly $900,000. Heitkamp, running for reelection for the first time since her 2012 victory, took in the least amount of money of the established Democratic senators with a campaign haul of $600,000—less than half the amount that fellow first-term senators Donnelly ($1.66 million) and Baldwin ($1.77 million) received during their tenures in office. Sen. Stabenow led the pack with $1.85 million collected over her congressional career, which began in 1997 in the House of Representatives before ascending to the Senate in 2001. Nelson, a congressman from 1979 to 1990 and senator since 2001, has taken in $1.3 million from organized labor.
All have been steady supporters in advancing the legislative agenda of major unions. Nelson, Donnelly, Baldwin, and Stabenow have each voted to repeal secret ballot elections for workers, allowing unions to bypass votes with a petition gathering process known as card check—a longtime goal of organized labor. None of the candidates have expressed support for national right-to-work legislation, which would prohibit employers from forcing workers to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment. Twenty-seven states currently have such laws on the books, but the committee hopes to settle the question with a federal law. It has already found partial success in federal court after the Supreme Court ruled in June that government agencies could not force workers to pay for public-sector unions.
All of the Democratic senators except for Heitkamp also backed legislation that have partially undone the Supreme Court's work, forcing "all 50 states to set up forced unionization schemes for every police officer and firefighter in the country—a first step toward putting all state and local public employees under union control," according to the committee.
Mourad links all of these positions to the hefty campaign contributions of public- and private-sector labor groups.
"When AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka spends that kind of money, he knows what he's buying: politicians' help in keeping rank-and-file workers under his monopoly control," Mourad said in a statement.
The committee said the award is meant to raise awareness about the candidates' voting records ahead of the midterm elections and "help mobilize people to bring grassroots pressure to bear on politicians who support Big Labor's radical forced-dues agenda," according to a release.