News: Where labor may lean

Friday, September 20, 2024

Where labor may lean

Sep 20, 2024

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With Timmy Facciola

Sean O’Brien speaks into a microphone.

The “announcement from the Teamsters shows the broad support Republicans enjoy among rank-and-file union members,” Hudson Valley Rep. Mike Lawler said in a statement. | Julia Nikhinson/AP

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ decision this week to withhold its coveted endorsement in the race for president was cheered by Donald Trump as a de facto win.

And, unsurprisingly, it was seen by down-ballot Republicans in New York House battlegrounds as a signal that labor is beginning to favor the GOP.

The “announcement from the Teamsters shows the broad support Republicans enjoy among rank-and-file union members,” Hudson Valley Rep. Mike Lawler said in a statement. “This is true not just in the Teamsters but throughout the building and construction trades in New York and states across the country.”

Lawler, who faces Democrat Mondaire Jones in one of a handful of races that could determine control of the House, has more reason than most to feel this way.

He got the endorsement of Elmsford-based Teamsters Local 456 in June, he got a shoutout from the RNC stage in Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien’s speech and he was among those who met with O’Brien this week at a Teamsters reception.

But the labor conversation is much bigger than the Teamsters. Labor is overwhelmingly Democratic turf, and Jones’ dozen influential union endorsements include the AFL-CIO.

Even within the Teamsters, there’s more at play than just rank-and-file versus leadership.

Before the non-endorsement, the union released internal survey results showing nearly 60 percent of its members backed Trump. O’Brien told POLITICO about 40,000 members participated in the online survey; Teamsters number about 1.3 million in total.

After the non-endorsement, local and regional Teamsters branches sprinted to endorse Kamala Harris, including in swing states, on the west and east coasts.

New York City’s Teamsters Local 237, the largest local, backed Harris enthusiastically.

Gregory Floyd, the president and vice president at-large of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, saw the national non-endorsement differently.

“It’s more of a signal to the candidate that the Teamsters union has not abandoned Kamala Harris’ candidacy,” Floyd told Playbook.

He went on to list the ways a Trump presidency would be detrimental to labor, referencing Project 2025’s proposed scrapping of public-sector unions and noting that President Joe Biden and Harris shored up the Teamsters pension fund.

Meanwhile, many House candidates are still waiting on word of local Teamsters nods.

Reps. Marc Molinaro and Nick LaLota were also at the recent Teamsters reception.

Molinaro said the union workers want “dignity, fair compensation,” then took a dig at his Democratic rival Josh Riley over illegal immigration. (Both have visited picketing BorgWarner auto parts workers in Lansing outside Ithaca.)

LaLota said, “Unions’ flight away from Democrats and towards common-sense conservatives like me is part of a larger political realignment.”

While neither LaLota nor Democrat John Avlon can yet claim a Teamsters endorsement, the Republican today will announce another highly sought labor nod: one from Transport Workers Union, or TWU, Local 252, Playbook has learned. — Emily Ngo

IT’S FRIDAY!!!! Got news? Send it our way: Jeff Coltin, Emily Ngo and Nick Reisman.

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WHERE’S KATHY? Speaking about phones in schools at an NYSUT conference in Albany and delivering remarks at the Business Council of NYS’ annual meeting in Bolton Landing.

WHERE’S ERIC? Delivering remarks at New York City Council member Selvena Brooks-Powers’ rally for a Rockaway Trauma Center.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Eventually one day but not now….More work to be done baby!!!” — NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell, taking to LinkedIn to dispel rumors that he is retiring amid a federal probe that has ensnared some of his department and pushed out the police commissioner

ABOVE THE FOLD

A draft mailer from the New York City Council criticizing Mayor Adams' ballot proposals.

Mayor Eric Adams’ commission defended the proposals as “thoughtful.” While City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams’ office said the language going on the ballot “is not honest,” so they had to make it more clear for voters. | Courtesy of the New York City Council

JUST BEING FRANK(ED): The City Council isn’t TELLING New Yorkers to vote no on the ballot proposals from Mayor Eric Adams’ Charter Revision Commission — that would be illegal.

They’re just saying that voting yes “protects corruption,” “blocks urgent safety fixes,” would “make the city government less responsive” and that it came from a “rushed” process.

That’s all language from the draft of a government-funded mailer from City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams’ office, set to be sent out in the coming weeks.

The City Charter outlaws government spending on “electioneering.” And the council’s mailer goes too far, even for people who agree the proposals meant to increase the mayor’s influence in the legislative process are a sham.

"The Charter prohibits the use of government funds to influence the outcome of a referendum, and any objective reading of this mailer would conclude that this is its intent,” Ben Weinberg, Public Policy Director at government reform advocacy group Citizens Union, which opposed the commission. “Even if there’s a technical argument that could be made based on the language, it clearly goes against the spirit of the Charter — irrespective of the merits of each ballot question.”

Members were asked if they wanted their own name and face on the mailer in their districts, and Playbook talked to at least three members who are opting out.

“It absolutely comes as close to the line as possible without crossing it,” one member said. “It’s bad optics. It’s using taxpayer money to drop an electioneering mailer in people’s homes.”

“The lengths this body will go to attack the mayor is outrageous,” another member quipped, “and their blatant disregard for election laws is deeply concerning.”

Adams’ commission defended the proposals as “thoughtful.” While Adrienne Adams’ office said the language going on the ballot “is not honest,” so they had to make it more clear for voters.

“Given the antidemocratic efforts and political misinformation by the Mayor’s Charter Revision Commission,” council spokesperson Mandela Jones said, “it’s important for the Council to communicate the policy impacts of Mayor Adams’ ballot proposals 2-6, especially those that impact lawmaking and holding the mayoral administration accountable to New Yorkers.” — Jeff Coltin

CITY HALL: THE LATEST

Dr. Jay Varma speaks.

A leading health advisor to former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio bragged about participating in a lewd gathering involving drug-use with eight to 10 others at a hotel in the city. | William Alatriste/NYC Council Media Unit

COVID HAZE: A leading public health adviser to former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was caught on camera boasting about breaking city lockdown rules he put in place during Covid-19, according to footage released Thursday by conservative political commentator Steven Crowder.

In a series of clips spliced together from several meetings with an unidentified individual, Jay Varma — who served as de Blasio’s Covid czar from April 2020 to May 2021 — boasts about violating lockdown policies by attending an “underground dance party” underneath a bank on Wall Street and participating in a lewd gathering involving drug-use with eight to 10 others at a hotel in the city.

Varma told POLITICO that he was “targeted by an operative for an extremist right-wing organization” with intentions to undermine his work as a public health official. He claims some of the recordings were taken out of context.

“Between April 2020 — May 2021, I participated in two gatherings. I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time,” Varma said in a statement provided by a spokesperson to POLITICO. “Facing the greatest public health crisis in a century, our top priority was to save lives, and every decision made was based on the best available science to keep New Yorkers safe.”

At the time, Varma was counseling de Blasio on his administration’s Covid response, including the implementation of lockdown measures and the rollout of the city’s contact tracing and vaccination programs.

“I stand by my efforts to get New Yorkers vaccinated against COVID-19, and I reject dangerous extremist efforts to undermine the public’s confidence in the need for and effectiveness of vaccines,” Varma said.

After leaving the administration, Varma served as director of Weill Cornell Medicine’s Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response. He now works for a health tech company.

Council Member Robert Holden took to social media to share his outrage over the footage of Varma, comments he said should be investigated.

“This was the public health expert for the city while it was shut down — he was busy having sex parties. He even admitted his job was to make people’s lives ‘really f*cking hard’,” Holden wrote in a post on X.

“It’s alarming, especially with so many first responders, city workers, and everyday New Yorkers losing their jobs or being sheltered in to ‘slow the spread’ while this was happening,” Holden added. — Katelyn Cordero

More from the city:

— Federal investigators are probing Adams adviser Frank Carone’s business dealings with Brooklyn priest Jamie Gigantiello. (NBC New York)

— After largely staying on the sidelines of the migrant crisis, a group of influential philanthropies is planning to spend millions of dollars this fall on efforts to make asylum seekers more self-sufficient. (New York Times)

— Politically weakened by investigations, Adams faces emboldened opponents to his “City of Yes” housing agenda who look to preserve a low-density neighborhood status quo. (THE CITY)

— Why Adams refuses to clean house in the mayor’s office, brushing off his scandals and banking on voters to do the same. (Vanity Fair)

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NEW FROM PLANET ALBANY

— Hochul is steering more than $1 million toward the flagging effort to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. (POLITICO)

— Emails suggest former Gov. Andrew Cuomo undersold his role in altering a Covid report on nursing homes to a congressional subcommittee. (New York Times)

—The public's enjoyment of a newly renovated Capitol courtyard may depend on the discretion of a familiar Albany entity: the pigeons. (Gothamist)

NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

—Gov. Kathy Hochul doubled down on her calls for student phone bans yesterday after a lockdown at a school on the Upper West Side. (NY Post)

— New York City’s trash containerization plan may lead to fines for community street cleaners. (Gothamist)

— Rep. Marc Molinaro and Josh Riley intensify their fight over immigration. Here’s where they stand. (Daily Freeman)

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SOCIAL DATA

Edited by Daniel Lippman

IN MEMORIAM: Former City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin — who helped save the city from near-bankruptcy in the 1970s — died at age 88. (NY1)

— Valarie D’Elia, travel reporter on TV and Radio, died at 64. (New York Times)

MAKING MOVES: NYPD Inspector Joseph Hayward has been tapped to become the department’s First Amendment protest supervisor — a position mandated by a legal settlement overhauling the policing of demonstrations. (Daily News)

— Kristen Edgreen Kaufman, the deputy commissioner of public private partnerships and economic development in the Mayor's Office of International Affairs, announced her resignation in a letter to colleagues. (NBC New York)

… Jason Halper and Sara (Bussiere) Brauerman are now New York-based partners in the litigation practice of Vinson and Elkins. They most recently worked at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. … Philippe A. Zimmerman has joined the litigation practice group of Greenspoon Marder in the firm’s New York and New Jersey offices. He most recently was at Moses Singer. … Olivia Choe has joined Milbank as a litigation arbitration partner. She most recently was chief litigation counsel for the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: City Hall deputy chief Menashe Shapiro … DHCR Commissioner RuthAnne Visnauskas … Kasirer’s Melissa Rosenberg … Geto & de Milly’s Mark Benoit … CNN’s Van Jones, Kristen Holmes and Cathy Straight … Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt … MSNBC’s Trymaine Lee … Deborah Roberts … Bloomberg Law’s Drew Singer … TikTok’s Maureen Shanahan Atchison … Rachel Glasberg of Civic Entertainment Group … Ali Bogdonoff … (WAS THURSDAY): Joe Kristol ... Mike Michalowicz ... Haym Soloveitchik