Democratic corporate donors a top target at labor-sponsored forum

AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler says labor will not support a candidate for leadership of the DNC who takes corporate money. | Susan Walsh/AP

NEW YORK – It is clear that rank and file party members and workers want more form those seeking the position of Democratic party chair than statements that only in messaging did the party leave something to be desired in an election that saw the return of Donald Trump to power. They want the party to take drastic steps to prove that it is really the party that represents the nation’s working class.

Democratic Party corporate donors,  campaign consultants and D.C. lobbyists proved a top target, therefore, of Democrats competing for the party’s national chair at a forum sponsored by the New York-based Jewish Labor Committee.

For workers and their allies it was no great surprise. In the AFL-CIO’s own analysis of the party chair’s race, issued in December, federation President Liz Shuler laid down a rule that “having leaders who prioritize big-money corporate donors is flatly unacceptable.”

The hopefuls who spoke at the two-hour session on January 6 all agreed the party should not hire attorneys and “consultants” who are also union-busters. They also all agreed not to accept campaign contributions from corporations that engage in the nefarious anti-worker tactic.

“I wouldn’t take any corporate money,” declared one relatively unknown—so far—hopeful, Jason Paul, a teacher. “Our 20-year record of choosing people based on their connections to the very top should be changed.” Corporate clout with the Democrats actually extends back to the Reagan years.

The Jewish Labor Committee called the forum three weeks before the party’s selection on February 1 of a new National Chair. All the hopefuls are contending to become the top face and voice of the Democrats in the looming era of felonious and anti-worker Republican President Donald Trump and the corporate class he’s installing in the government.

But there’s a problem: The Democrats are widely perceived to have left workers behind. “Reviewing the relationship between working people and the Democratic Party is still going on,” explained Stuart Applebaum, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union president and chair of the Jewish Labor Committee, the forum’s sponsor.

Many of the questions revolved around nut-and-bolts of party-building. Several hopefuls said the Democrats cannot rely on parachuting people in during the last weeks of a campaign, or depend on union volunteers to carry the door-to-door load 24/7 365 days a year for the next four years, talking to voters about their needs.

The party, all said, needs its own structure, and it needs it now, long before the next election.

That was a point pushed by Paul, former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Wisconsin Democratic Chair Ben Winkler, Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party Chair Ken Martin and Syracuse, N.Y., activist Nate Snyder, a former Service Employees organizer.

O’Malley, Winkler, Snyder and Martin all stressed their party-building successes in their states—and the pro-worker laws that resulted. “I organized the political program at my local and later managed the political program” for the entire two-million-member union, Snyder claimed.

Paul said he would hire 10,000 fulltime organizers now “for up to two years,” before the next election. Winkler touted establishing “a year-round war room” to combat Republican schemes. Another hopeful noted many of the GOP lies are about unions and their members.

Backing of one major leader

Winkler has the backing of at least one major party leaders, U.S. Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer. But union leaders make up one-fifth of the Democratic National Committee and so far they’re keeping mum.

Who that Democratic face and voice will be—and what they’ll do–is up in the air. The hopefuls who addressed the 1,700 activists who attended are part of a bitter debate pitting the party’s corporate wing and so-called “New Democrats” against the AFL-CIO, workers, progressives and their allies. It’s also a rerun of intraparty conflict that surfaced during the Bill Clinton years.

The corporate wing blames the progressives, and particularly “The Squad” in the U.S. House, for constructing an image of a party that is out of touch. It also sneers the party caters to “special interests,” particularly unions, workers of color, and young and LGBTQ people.

The progressives, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., retort that pro-corporate and campaign consultants on Washington’s lobbying corridor of K Street, abandoned workers in favor of elites and big money.

The corporate role in Democratic Party as w3ell as Republican politics is obvious. In one example, OpenSecrets.org reported, one of the nation’s richest people, Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos, gave $2,305,830 Vice President Kamala Harris, and $851,000 more to three other top Democratic Party committees. Harris lost to Trump and now Bezos is cozying up to Trump.

And workers know about and don’t like the big donors’ clout, said the Democratic hopefuls: Paul, O’Malley, Wisconsin Chair Winkler, Dr. Quintessa Hathaway, a school administrator, Minnesota DFL Chair Martin, New York State Sen. James Skoutis, and former presidential hopeful Williamson.

Missing the point of his own message, Skoutis said, “We’re right on the policy, right on the issues, but wrong on the messaging.”

By contrast, “The Democratic Party must focus on our voters, and move away from high-dollar donors,” said Snyder, echoing AFL-CIO President Shuler’s statement of several weeks ago.

Again stressing message over content, O’Malley said, “We need to do a much better job of communicating our central message. Going forward, cutting-edge tech is going to be essential not only in contacting voters but, more importantly, in listening to them. The DNC can shape this new future.”

“And I’m a proven operation turnaround leader,” stated O’Malley, who briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination nine years ago. He cited his experience under President Biden in straightening out poor customer service at the Social Security Administration. Trump has threatened to cut Social Security staffing, but not its payments—yet. Other Republicans have.

While may workers did not vote for Vice President Harris, one hopeful said, the consultants didn’t care, as long as “they took their 15% of ad spending off the top” in commissions—for ads that didn’t reach kitchen-table issues.

But now, Democrats and workers “face corporate power and short-term profit maximization is their [Republicans] goal,” Williamson warned. “The Democratic Party has to stand strong and talk to people about what” the Republicans “are doing, every single day—and what we are doing to fight back.”

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CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.