One of the state’s largest labor groups — typically a formidable ally in Democratic primary races — endorsed challengers over longtime incumbents in three San Antonio-area Texas House races.
The move comes as the leaders of the AFL-CIO say their members want change in the candidates they’re sending to a conservative-dominated legislature where Democrats continue to be marginalized from the legislative process.
“We heard loud and clear from our delegates was that they want to see their electeds on the front lines with them right now, because working people are under such attack,” said Alejandra Lopez, president of the San Antonio AFL-CIO Central Labor Council.
The long list of endorsements nominated local chapters and confirmed over the weekend at the AFL-CIO’s statewide gathering in Georgetown includes:
- Robert Mihara, an attorney and U.S. Army veteran running against state Rep. Philip Cortez (D-San Antonio) in Texas House District 117.
- Attorney Ryan Ayala, a political newcomer who is running against state Rep. Liz Campos (D-San Antonio) in Texas House District 119.
- And special education teacher Jordan Brown, one of two candidates challenging state Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins (D-San Antonio) in Texas House District 120.
“The big unions [under the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations] are the teachers, Communications Workers of America and the firefighters. The teachers have a lot of votes there,” said local Democratic strategist Laura Barberena, who isn’t working on any of those races, but stressed the value of the endorsement.
“It comes often with money, which of course is a critical component to doing these campaigns,” Barberena said. “And then also other types of resources, like reaching out to their union members across all of the different trades to be able to get them to mobilize in the particular areas that the person is running in.”
Outside groups typically avoid going up against incumbents, but San Antonio’s Republican state House members are in a similar boat this year.
A pro-business legal reform group is spending against state Reps. Marc LaHood and Mark Dorazio in GOP primaries — part of its effort to bring the Republican conference back to its more business-centric roots.
Likewise, the AFL-CIO backed candidates who want the Democratic Party to return to its focus on the working class, rejecting incumbents who’ve been reelected many times in an environment where lobbyists’ dollars are the name of the game.
All three incumbents AFL-CIO endorsed against have managed to find some traction in a Republican-controlled House by sticking with Democrats on major votes, like opposing school vouchers, but working across the aisle on smaller bills for their district.
Campos, for example, got GOP cosponsors on her dangerous dog legislation that passed the House and Senate but was vetoed by Gov. Greg Abbott. Meanwhile Cortez chairs a subcommittee on Defense and Veterans’ Affairs at a time when few positions of power have been awarded to Democrats.
But Cortez came under fire from the left this year. He was one of the only Democrats who elected not to leave the state in an effort to break quorum and deny Republicans the votes they needed to approve new GOP-friendly congressional maps last year. Gervin-Hawkins has long been at odds with teachers’ unions over her closeness with the charter school movement, divisions that only intensified after comments she made about working with Republicans on school vouchers.
Asked about the wave of challengers calling for change in the primary this year, however, Gervin-Hawkins told the San Antonio Report that her ability to work across the aisle is why voters should send her back, not take a chance on someone new.
“What we need now is experience, we need people who come prepared,” Gervin-Hawkins said in a recent interview. “I’m a promoter of young people, but that should be once they’re seasoned, once they volunteer to be in the office … The Democrats do not need novice today, that will hurt us.”
Her opponent, a teacher at Northside ISD, said that after watching the chamber approve a school voucher program and other bills that impact educators, it was clear Democrats needed a new approach.
“Whenever I hear Barbara Gervin-Hawkins talk, [she] is often times saying, ‘It’s a numbers game. There’s this many Republicans, this many Democrats, and so you’re gonna try and find a win in any situation,'” Brown said. “While I get that strategy, it’s not working. It’s time for us to say — to quote U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico (D) — ‘Let’s start flipping tables.'”
The AFL-CIO also chose a candidate in the Democratic primary to replace retiring state Rep. Ray Lopez (D-San Antonio), backing SAISD union leader Adrian Reyna over Lopez’s chief of staff Donovon Rodriguez and two other candidates.
A new face of the Democratic Party
After three decades of losing statewide elections in Texas, labor leaders have been on a mission to put some different faces on the Democratic ticket this year.
The AFL-CIO is under new leadership and held a campaign boot camp last year for union leaders they hoped would consider running for office.
Over the weekend they endorsed two of the program’s alumni, Marcos Isaias Vélez and Jose Loya of the United Steelworkers, who each bring a profile more like Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) than Texas’ past statewide nominees, who largely came from Congress or political families.
Loya, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who worked at a refinery in the Panhandle, was long encouraged to run under the Republican banner, but former AFL-CIO President Rick Levy recruited him to speak at a Bernie Sanders rally, and now he’s running for Land Commissioner in a Democratic primary with Bay City Councilman Benjamin Flores.
“I’m not a lifelong Democrat, I’ve always been kind of in the middle,” Loya said in an interview on a recent campaign swing through San Antonio. “What we need is working people representing the working people of Texas … because career politicians have got us to where we’re at now.”
Vélez, an oil and gas worker from Houston, is running for lieutenant governor in a Democratic primary with state Rep. Vikki Goodwin (D-Austin).
Among the challenges of putting up such little-known candidates is the massive fundraising gap they face running against statewide Republicans, but Vélez said that what he and other labor candidates lack in fundraising prowess, they make up for in institutional support from their unions.
“I think labor candidates have a unique advantage in the work that we do,” he told the San Antonio Report in an interview this month after meeting with the Bexar County Young Democrats. “If you go home and you tell your mom and dad about your union brother that’s running, it’s a done deal. Labor has historically voted in higher percentages, [particularly in] primaries.”
