AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called the Tuesday’s blue wave, “the largest midterm mobilization in the labor movement's history,” reaching more than 16 million union voters at their doors, on phones, and at worksites—while also electing a record number of union members to Congress and state legislatures.
By Steve Wishnia
Last month, as more than 1,000 union members rallied to launch a labor campaign to protect the midterm elections from tampering by the Trump administration, New York City Central Labor Council President Brendan Griffith told Work-Bites they were working for a large turnout. He said he hoped “that these races are not close and that the results are clear.”
On Nov. 3, the results were not close. Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress, taking at least 54 seats on the Senate and probably well over 230 in the House. They won a Senate seat in Kansas for the first time since 1932, in South Carolina for the first time since 1998, and took the governorship of Texas for the first time since 1990, with Gina Hinojosa unseating three-term incumbent Greg Abbott. They might even win a Senate seat from Mississippi, which they’d dismissed as hopeless: As of 8 a.m., according to Associated Press figures, Democrat Scott Colom was leading Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by 43 votes.
People are “tired of oligarchy” and “billionaires having the power to buy senators,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told an online press conference on the Proposition 40 wealth-tax ballot initiative just before the polls closed in California. “These folks are the new economic royalists. People have had it.”
Texas AFL-CIO President Leonard Aguilar (left) and Texas AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Lorraine Montemayor (right) at James Talarico’s victorious watch party in Austin on Tuesday night. Photo Courtesy of Texas AFL-CIO.
The Republicans suffered from several glaringly bad candidates. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who ousted incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the primary, was a leading 2020-election denier who had escaped conviction for securities fraud and impeachment for bribery, and despite his oft-proclaimed religious faith, persuaded the real-estate developer he was accused of taking bribes from to put his mistress on the payroll. Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy thought it was a good idea to run an ad featuring his opponent’s mother calling her a liar—ignoring the fact that the mother had fled the state with her husband when her daughter was 12, after he was charged with raping her. Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall was a doctor who’d sued hundreds of patients who fell behind in their bills, leading to at least 80 being arrested. Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina, appointed in July to replace her late brother Lindsay, said “I’m not that informed on national security” during a TV debate.
Elon Musk spent more than $200 million trying to get Paxton elected.
“Together, we rejected a government driven by greed rather than the needs of working families. This is just the beginning,. We expect the leaders we elected to be ready to protect Medicaid, expand access to quality care, restore immigrant protections, and defend our right to organize.”
The Democrats, on the other hand, benefited from a plain-spoken crop of candidates. James Talarico, who defeated Paxton by more than 1.2 million votes, said in his victory speech that it sent a message to “every billionaire megadonor, every trillionaire megadonor, every corrupt defender of this broken political system in this state,” but also called for “a politics of love… one that stands between the bullies and the bullied.” Angie Nixon, the democratic socialist who lost a close race for the Senate in Florida, didn’t run away from Medicare for All as a radical idea; she asked what was so radical about wanting people to have good health care. Michigan senator-elect Abdul El Sayed turned a far-right troll’s demand that he “disavow the Muslim Brotherhood” into a defense of the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of religion and freedom from religious coercion.
“This blue wave is union-made,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement. She called the campaign “the largest midterm mobilization in the labor movement's history,” reaching more than 16 million union voters at their doors, on phones, and at worksites, and electing a record number of union members to Congress and state legislatures.
The Trump administration’s efforts to purge the voting lists, mess with mail-in ballots, harass and intimidate voters, and gerrymander districts “did not work,” she added.
“With Texas union membership at a 25-year high, it’s no coincidence that we just took back our state. Texan workers have declared that corrupt politicians who side with billionaires will not serve us,” said Texas AFL-CIO President Leonard Aguilar. “Our work is only getting started — and Texas is the biggest battleground state for 2028.”
“Together, we rejected a government driven by greed rather than the needs of working families. This is just the beginning,” President of 1199SEIU President Yvonne Armstrong said in a statement. “We expect the leaders we elected to be ready to protect Medicaid, expand access to quality care, restore immigrant protections, and defend our right to organize.”
American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said he looked forward to “the 120th Congress passing legislation to correct the injustices of the past few years and pulling DOGE corruption up by its roots”—specifically, “overturning President Trump’s orders from last year that illegally eliminated collective bargaining rights for more than a million federal employees.”