With 10 days left in tight Senate race, Casey takes his campaign to Philly-area unions

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey dubbed Saturday “labor day” for his campaign.

The Pennsylvania Democrat, locked in a tight fight for reelection, addressed hundreds of union workers across Philadelphia as they held get-out-the-vote events and knocked on doors 10 days before Election Day.

“We’ve got to remind them that the right to organize a union is on the ballot this election, because that is the next right they’re coming for,” Casey told a crowd of union members gathered by the Communications Workers of America to knock on doors for his campaign and that of Vice President Kamala Harris.

He noted that his Republican opponent, businessman Dave McCormick, had received significant funding from Wall Street-backed super PACS. He pointed to that as evidence that McCormick would support tax cuts for the wealthy, not working-class Americans.

“Do you really think those billionaires that are supporting him, and those big corporations, do you really think they give a damn about the right to organize?” Casey asked as union members in the audience shouted “no.”

Casey’s race against McCormick has grown increasingly tight in recent weeks as the Democrat seeks a fourth term in the U.S. Senate. As Democrats worked to get out the vote before Election Day, Casey returned to one of his key constituencies — union members — as he visited three separate events Saturday hosted by unions in the Philadelphia area.

McCormick held a rally Saturday with veterans in the Lehigh Valley. Though Casey has earned the support of a broad range of labor groups in the race, McCormick has the support of several police unions and the Philadelphia Firefighters and Paramedics Union.

Casey started the day at a rally in Spring Garden hosted by the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters. He launched a Day of Action for the organization alongside Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, attorney general candidate Eugene DePasquale, Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia), and others. He visited the CWA canvass launch in Northeast Philly and was scheduled to visit with the American Federation of Teachers in Delaware County in the afternoon.

“Our party would not be successful in any election if it weren’t for the men and women of organized labor,” Casey said in an interview. “They have for many generations now been the foundation of the strength of the Democratic Party. And we’ve got to make sure that as we make our kind of final arguments to the voters that we’re lifting up unions and the work they do.”

Though labor leaders have stayed broadly supportive, union members have moved to the right, forming a key set of Trump supporters in recent elections.

Bill Sproule, secretary-treasurer of the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, noted the power union members have to drive the vote among their own membership and the community at large. Though union members have been behind some of Trump’s support since 2016, Sproule said he felt some of those members were “coming to their senses.”

“When the former president did his tax modifications to the tax laws in 2017, the following year was a wake-up call for a lot of union members and a lot of union households,” Sproule said.

Members of more than a dozen unions gathered in Northeast Philadelphia before knocking on doors Saturday, with some traveling from New York and New Jersey to the battleground state to help encourage other union members to vote for Harris and Casey.

“They’re going to do everything they can to destroy unions,” Claude Cummings Jr., president of Communications Workers of America, said of Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

Several union members at Saturday’s rally said they were not primarily motivated by labor rights but rather by rights for immigrants and protection of democracy.

Dennis Dunn, a 50-year-old Philadelphia lineman who knocked on doors Saturday, said that he was glad Harris and Walz were pro-union but that his primary motivator was the sense that democracy was at risk. He became emotional discussing the memory of Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol seeking to block the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

“Watching a Confederate flag carried around in a Congress hall — which should have never happened — broke me almost as a human being,” Dunn said.

For Ava Green-Harris, the heavy heart remains. This time with an added election concern: her citizenship.

The Bahamas-born New Yorker became a citizen as a child, following her parents’ naturalization. But she worries a second Trump presidency would put her citizenship and right to vote at risk because she was not born in the U.S.

To help ease her worry, she joined her union in Philadelphia to help people realize “the importance of being given the right to vote.”

”We don’t want to go back to the past,” Green-Harris said. “It’s important to get the people out to vote, to make sure they do vote, and do their part in democracy.”