How One Huge Labor Union Is Reaching This Election’s Swing Voters

The Scoop

Even with the political wind at their backs for this midterm, Democrats still aren’t sparking enthusiasm among low-propensity voters. So when doorknockers for the country’s largest hospitality union fan out in swing states, they don’t start by mentioning the party.

UNITE HERE, which boasts more than 300,000 members across the country, tells its organizers to zero in on voters’ personal financial situations before seeking support for Democratic candidates. In Texas, a doorknocker for the union might reference last year’s Hilton Americas-Houston hotel strike before pivoting to telling a voter that Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico and gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa supported workers’ drive for a higher wage.

“That’s more what we find effective, because there is an apathy about Democrats in general,” Gwen Mills, UNITE HERE’s president, told Semafor. “We talk about the agency that workers and working-class people have to change their lives through their union, and then through voting. That’s a different angle into having a conversation about the election.”

It’s a sign that Democrats still have work to do nationally to rebuild their brand, and it also reveals the messages voters are hearing right before Election Day on pocketbook issues that are dominating the national mood.

UNITE HERE is well-known for its heft in Nevada, where the hospitality union has played a massive role in Democrats’ turnout machine over the past two decades. It’s still playing in the Silver State, working to flip back the governor’s office from GOP control and hold the state’s three battleground House districts.

The union is also working to bring its economic message to more than a million households across a broader array of races in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. UNITE HERE has focused its persuasion project on reaching low-propensity voters — the bloc that often swings elections — by talking about workers’ issues.

Low-propensity voters, pollsters have found, often think the system is “rigged” against them and are highly skeptical of both parties.

“We’re talking to people who really feel left behind by the political system,” Mills said. “They’re working-class voters. And I think they see, whether they voted for Trump or Biden, right, or for Democrats or Republicans, they’re like: ‘This system is failing us.’”

The campaign is taking UNITE HERE to unusual places, like Florida’s 27th District, which GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar won by 20 points in 2024. The union is running a Spanish-language canvass there in support of Democrat Eliott Rodriguez, a tough slog in South Florida where the Republican brand is still strong.

But though the union wants to win that race and other battleground seats, its work in Florida isn’t just about the midterms. Mills described a hope to get out ahead of larger demographic shifts already underway in American politics.

“When the Census happens in 2030, you’re going to have a shift in the electoral college … [moving] seats in Congress out of states like New York and California, into states like Florida and Texas, and really across the Sun Belt,” Mills said. “We’re certainly focused on building the infrastructure in those places.”

Room for Disagreement

The hospitality union is not explicitly partisan and said that it could support pro-union Republicans in a future election. But not this year.

“In the past, we certainly supported Republicans, and we could in the future,” Mills said. “But there’s a particular moment here, and folks who aren’t standing up to the brutality of these policies that are being passed don’t get excused.”

Burgess’s view

Millions of dollars of ad buys can only do so much to reach voters. It’s doorknockers like those working for UNITE HERE — and conservative organizations like Americans for Prosperity — that are doing the hard work behind the scenes to persuade voters.

No one factor will be decisive, but if there’s an archetype of this year’s swing voter, it’s the folks this union is trying to reach: low-propensity voters who hate both parties.

Notable

• UNITE HERE and state AFL-CIOs and their affiliates are targeting swing voters in several states with the “Contract with Working Americans,” a populist economic platform they devised independently of the national AFL-CIO, Semafor’s Brendan Ruberry reports.