The main national body of the Teamsters union may have declined to endorse a candidate for the 2024 presidential election, but that hasn't stopped local units from doing so.
According to the Kamala Harris campaign, almost two dozen local Teamsters unions and joint councils representing approximately 1 million Teamster-affiliated workers have endorsed the vice president in recent days, including ones in the key battleground states of Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The support comes as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBOT) said this week that it was breaking with precedent by not issuing an official presidential endorsement. The teamsters have generally backed Democrats for president in recent races.
“Neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement. O'Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention and has stated he did not receive a similar invite from the Democrats.
Harris enjoys broad support from other union groups including the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor group, the Service Employees International Union and the Culinary Workers Union. These are traditionally Democratic-aligned groups with a diverse set of workers.
However, the Teamsters are more traditionally associated with white working-class voters — a key voting bloc for determining November's outcome.
And while the Teamsters' official non-endorsement was a clear setback for Harris, the action has not stopped individual Teamsters units from offering their own statements of support.
Kevin Moore, president of the Michigan Teamsters, said the state unit's decision to endorse Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was unanimous among its board.
"The Joint Council and Teamsters of Michigan know it’s too important for us to do a neutral endorsement," Moore told NBC 25, an NBC News affiliate in central Michigan. "We’re going to do a full force endorsement for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz ... our members are telling us that.”
Moore was slated to make an appearance at a Harris campaign stop in Michigan on Friday.
Meanwhile, Bill Carroll, head of Teamsters Joint Council 39, which represents 15,000 workers in Wisconsin, said "some" of its 15,000 unit members support Trump.
Nevertheless, the unit was endorsing Harris and Walz.
“There really hasn’t been any type of action that the Republicans in Wisconsin have done that have really benefited organized labor or working families in general," Carroll told the radio station WTAQ.
In a statement this week, James P. Hoffa, president emeritus of the Teamsters and the son of former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, said the 2024 election was “too important for our union to not do its duty.”
“There is only one candidate in this race that has supported working families and unions throughout their career and that is Vice President Kamala Harris,” he said.
It is not clear what impact the latest constellation of endorsements will ultimately have on Harris' election chances. An internal poll conducted by the Teamsters had shown its members overwhelmingly favoring Trump, even as an earlier poll showed majority support for President Joe Biden before he dropped out of the race.
Trump has hailed the non-endorsement.
“The Teamsters carry a lot of weight," he told reporters Wednesday. "The Democrats cannot believe it. Look, it was always automatic that Democrats get the Teamsters, and they said, ‘We won’t endorse the Democrats this year,’ so that was an honor for me.”
