Anika Begay
Politics
/
August 2, 2024
When the UAW president asked his members who Kamala Harris should choose as her running mate, “the most popular name was Andy Beshear.”
Andy Beshear visits striking UAW workers on the picket line in Louisville, Kentucky, October 18, 2023.
(Chirping)
When United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain asked union members who Kamala Harris should pick as her running mate, he replied, “The most popular name was Andy Beshear.”
Fain shares members’ enthusiasm for the two-term Kentucky governor, who is reportedly among the final group of candidates Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is considering for a spot on the 2024 Democratic ticket.
“For me personally, I love Andy Beshear. The man has been with us every step of the way. He won in a state that is red twice as a Democrat, in Mitch McConnell’s home state,” the UAW leader said in an interview with a Detroit TV station. Fain also spoke highly of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, another reported finalist in the vice presidential race. “Tim Walz was a great labor man,” he said. “When we look at it as a group, we’ve looked at all these candidates, we think Beshear and Walz are by far the two best that will represent labor interests and stand up for the working class.”
Fain is right. Walz was a “great union man” in Minnesota, a fairly solid Democratic state with strong unions that have supported every Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976. But Fain steered the conversation back to Beshear in case anyone missed the point, saying, “I’m personally a big fan of Andy Beshear.
Why is the UAW president so excited about Beshear, a former Kentucky attorney general, who beat an incumbent Republican governor in 2019 and then won reelection in 2023 in a state that voted for Donald Trump by 30 points in 2016 and 26 points in 2020? It’s not just that Beshear won in a Republican state. It’s that he did it as a pro-choice, pro-public education, and ardently pro-labor Democrat. While other governors in the South and border states have openly opposed unions and tried to use their positions to block union organizing drives, Beshear has welcomed them.
And Beshear joined union picket lines, siding with striking workers even in the midst of heated election campaigns, where he knew he could face backlash from corporate interests.
Current problem
That’s what happened last year, when Beshear, who won his initial gubernatorial election in 2019 by just 5,000 votes, found himself competing against Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a protégé of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Cameron was campaigning as a favorite of Trump and conservative donors in Kentucky and beyond.
This was the kind of race that border-state and Southern Democrats, like former President Bill Clinton, who came to the national stage as a former governor of Arkansas, used to handle gingerly, presenting themselves as kinder, softer, more business-friendly versions of their Republican rivals. Unions were treated as an afterthought at best and a convenient punching bag at worst, while Clinton and many of her allies in business-aligned groups like the Democratic Leadership Council wallowed in their divisions with unions over issues like free trade and financial regulation.
But these are different times politically, and Beshear is emblematic of the shift, as are President Biden and Vice President Harris. Democrats are increasingly willing to reject the compromises of the Clinton era and its aftermath. Last September, Biden walked a UAW picket line in Michigan and supported striking union members’ demands for a major wage increase, new worker protections and a say in the direction of a rapidly transitioning industry. Pundits kept saying the union was asking for too much, and Trump was telling autoworkers their demands would kill the American auto industry. But Democrats in the heavily unionized Great Lakes states were stumbling to join the picket lines.
What is noteworthy is that Beshear, who was running in a Republican state, did the same.
In a move that would no doubt have shocked Clinton and her “New Democratic” allies in their heyday, the governor joined striking UAW workers on the line in mid-October. Announcing that he would stand with members of UAW Local 862 as “the proud pro-union governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” Beshear rallied with workers outside the sprawling Ford Truck Plant in Louisville, one of the largest plants the union struck as part of its ultimately successful fight for better contracts with the Big Three automakers. As he handed out sandwiches to the strikers, Beshear praised the union activists for standing up for all Kentucky workers, union and non-union, for “better wages, better benefits and [the assurance] may everyone return home safely at the end of the day.”
There were no words used, no punches thrown. “I’m here for you,” said Beshear, who has worked closely with Ford to expand electric vehicle battery production in Kentucky.
When the UAW won tentative agreements with General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford—agreements that include a path for workers at future battery plants to get union representation and union wages—it was clear that the union’s demands were right and that the political leaders who supported the UAW were not only morally right, but also politically smart.
But joining the picket line in October was nothing new for Beshear, a longtime supporter of organized labor who joined the UAW picket lines even before his election as governor.
Beshear has charted a bold course in the 2023 race. In addition to campaigning for reelection as an unapologetically pro-union candidate, he has also championed expanded voting rights by ensuring that Kentucky citizens with felony convictions could cast their ballots; championed abortion rights; and opposed anti-LGBTQI+ legislation targeting trans youth. Often explaining his positions in the context of his Christian faith and belief that it is his job to “care for the lost, lonely, and abandoned,” Beshear surprised even some of his own supporters by winning reelection by a relatively comfortable 53-47 margin in a state where no Democrat has won a presidential race in the 21st century.
Beshear won that race by setting a new model for how a border state governor manages with organized labor, a model that its supporters say could translate well on the national scene.
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During last year’s campaign, Beshear celebrated the strong support he had from organized labor, including the Kentucky AFL-CIO and the United Mine Workers of America, whose president, Cecil Roberts, announced Beshear’s UMWA endorsement, saying, “The United Mine Workers of America stands with those who stand with us.” Beshear even made his pro-union stance front and center in a mid-October debate with Cameron, which came just before the UAW reached a tentative deal with Ford. “I am proud to be a UAW-endorsed governor,” Beshear said. “Our UAW families are fighting for better wages and better health benefits, something we should want for every single citizen. We need them to come out of this with more opportunities for their children and a better future here in Kentucky.”
Kentucky citizens heard that message. And so did Shawn Fain. And, perhaps, Kamala Harris.
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