Challenging the myth of a Trump takeover of the union vote

Labor strategist Steve Rosenthal says Kamala Harris fared better with union voters than headlines suggest — and outlines the labor movement’s path forward.

By Kalena Thomhave, for Capital & Main

Before the election, several headlines suggested that union voters had abandoned the Democratic Party for Donald Trump. And though Trump did indeed win the presidential election on Nov. 5 with many rank-and-file union members’ support, he didn’t win union voters overall. What’s more, Steve Rosenthal, who has worked as an electoral strategist in the labor movement for more than 40 years, thinks the political coin could flip again as soon as 2026.

A former political director of the AFL-CIO, where he helped revitalize labor’s political influence, Rosenthal focuses on engaging union members and working-class voters. He is currently president of the Organizing Group, a political consulting firm that works with labor unions to help them get out the vote and win campaigns. The firm runs In Union, a voter mobilization program that reached 1.5 million mostly white working-class voters this year in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as Ohio. After Kamala Harris’ loss, Rosenthal believes the labor movement needs to start preparing now for the anti-worker changes that may come from a second Trump administration — and also for the next election.