Unions will play key role in special Senate election

As Congressmen Edward Markey of Malden and Stephen Lynch of Boston square off for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State John Kerry and three lesser known Republicans try to gather enough signatures to get on the ballot, unions will again play a key role in helping determine who eventually becomes the state’s junior senator. 

Both Democratic candidates visited The Berkshires last week, and Lynch touted not only his union endorsements, but his own work history, which includes employment as an iron worker and serving as the youngest president of his union local in Boston. He said he had been endorsed by several area postal union chapters and also has the support of the Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Building Trades Council and other unions representing commercial and construction painters, carpenters and Boston transportation workers.

Markey also has union endorsements. He has the support of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 93 and the influential Massachusetts Teachers Association. 

The 400,000-member Massachusetts AFL-CIO, the state’s most powerful labor organization, will announce this Friday if it will endorse a candidate in the race. It takes a two-thirds vote to get the association’s endorsement.  

Both candidates would love the AFL-CIO’s nod and will likely get additional union support. These labor endorsements are important, as they bring infusions of cash and help turn out hundreds, even thousands, of volunteer union door knockers, phone callers and sign holders.

Union leaders acknowledge organized labor was asleep at the wheel when former Republican Sen. Scott Brown beat Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley three years ago in the special election to replace the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. So unions got their act together in 2012 and were important in Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s defeat of Brown in the general election. 

Lynch is the underdog

Lynch may end up getting the majority of union endorsements in the primary and even the AFL-CIO endorsement is possible, but he is still the underdog against Markey. The Malden Democrat got into the race earlier and has the support of Kerry, the late senator’s widow Vicki Kennedy and many other party notables.

He has also served in Congress much longer and has a liberal reputation and a national profile. Lynch has opposed abortion rights and same sex marriage and voted against the president’s health care law, a decidedly more conservative candidate than Markey and one who likely won’t do as well with a traditionally progressive Democratic primary electorate. 

Democrats are lucky that the still popular Brown chose not to run in the upcoming Senate special election and that no other well-known Republican has either. This leaves the Republican field to state Rep. Daniel Winslow (R-Norfolk), former U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan and former Navy Seal turned businessman Gabriel Gomez. As of this writing, only Winslow, among the three Republicans, seems confident he will collect the 10,000 signatures he needs to simply get on the ballot.

The better organized Markey and Lynch campaigns are not worried about getting on the ballot. They’ve been working on it for weeks.

No matter who wins the Democratic primary, however, Republicans can be assured that, in the general election, most of the state’s unions, including the AFL-CIO, will come together and get behind the Democrat nominee.

When Massachusetts Democrats are united and organized labor matches the effort it made in a race like the Warren victory last November, it will be very tough for any of this group of Republican candidates to win this seat.

Posted by Bruce Garlow on February 28, 2013. Filed under Berkshire Beacon Hill Spotlight,Columns,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry