Sen. Joe Donnelly is a friend of the working man, but in Indiana these days that isn’t worth that many votes. The percentage of Hoosier union workers is at its lowest point since the Democrat entered the upper chamber.
According to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Indiana had 266,000 dues-paying union members in 2017. While membership had been growing steadily throughout Donnelly’s first term, that’s a sudden 12.5 percent plunge down from the 304,000 union members the state had in 2016.
This is reason for alarm and possibly reason for an updated political strategy. But Donnelly has always relied on a well-worn, old-timey, pro-labor political pitch, and he seems like he is sticking to it.
Just recently his campaign blasted out an op-ed written by union boss Brett Voorhies of the AFL-CIO, who called the senator “the best choice for working Hoosiers.” Joe is happy with the endorsement and with the campaign contributions that come from it. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, labor affiliated super PACs have donated $256,500 to the Donnelly campaign this cycle alone.
Donnelly punches his union card regularly, telling sheet-metal workers in February that he has “worked every day in the Senate to make sure that a good-paying job, a robust economy, and a strong union are all available to hard-working Hoosiers.”
A standard pitch in more liberal states, it could fall on more deaf ears in Indiana. The state became a right-to-work state in 2012 under then Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, and the economy has continued to buzz to the envy of next-door Illinois and Ohio. A better right-to-work economy could mean a bad political forecast.
A 2018 study by James Feigenbaum of Boston University, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez of Columbia University, and Vanessa Williamson of the Brookings Institution compared the political results of right-to-work states with their non-right-to-work neighbors. They found that right-to-work laws decreased the presidential vote share by 3.5 percent for Democrats.
Granted, Donnelly is running in a midterm. Granted also that this isn’t the lowest level of union membership during his tenure. But the sudden drop and the documented political consequences of right-to-work for Democrats could be a drag for Union Joe.
