SEIU Local 284 members Mike Selle and Cathy Garrett canvass union households in Shakopee to support Democrats on Oct. 26, 2024. Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer.
SHAKOPEE — Cathy Garrett has become an experienced and effective union messenger by now. The 16-year veteran paraprofessional at Hopkins High School has long been an active member of her union SEIU Local 284, door-knocking and phone-banking for Democrats during election season.
On a recent Saturday, as part of a crew of more than 70 union members who fanned out across Shakopee to talk to union households, she faced perhaps one of her most difficult tasks: convincing her own door-knocking partner to cast his ballot for union-endorsed candidates.
Mike Selle, a relatively new paraprofessional, is ambivalent about the presidential race and the entire political system. In the last presidential election, he wrote on his ballot that he doesn’t think there should be a presidential position. He’s pretty sure that’s what he’s going to do this year, too.
“I don’t like Harris. I don’t like Trump,” Selle, a 44-year-old father of two said. “Harris wants to support wars. Trump’s just a glorified rich kid with an ego. It’s not good having somebody like that running the country.”
He showed up to volunteer on a Saturday morning to urge union workers to turn out for Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. Rep. Angie Craig and state Rep. Brad Tabke because he trusts his union and supports their efforts to lobby for higher wages and benefits for school employees. He even signed up to deduct $5 from each paycheck for the union’s political education committee.
Selle fits the once-solidly Democratic demographic that has moved toward Trumpism: white, working-class men. He’s also an avid listener of The Joe Rogan Experience, a cultural juggernaut for young men and the most-listened-to podcast in the United States, but he was put off by Trump’s attitude in his recent three-hour-long appearance on the show (though he didn’t finish the whole episode).
Selle is relatively new to being a union member. He worked as a machinist in a non-union plant making parts for industrial farming equipment before he took the job as a safety coach in Hopkins and joined SEIU about a year ago. His exposure to unions before that was a heating and cooling teacher at Dunwoody warning them that unions come with “a lot of strings attached.”
He seemed receptive to Garrett’s arguments and later, pleadings, to at least vote for the down ballot candidates or else they’ll be “screwed.” Selle lives in a nearby competitive district where union-backed Ann Stewart Johnson is running against Kathleen Fowke, the wife of Xcel’s former CEO, in a special race that will determine which party controls the state Senate.
“I’ve never been political… I’m finding out how this all works,” Selle said, without committing.
Door by door, Minnesota unions have been hustling for months to turn out their own members to keep Democrats in control of state government and the White House. They want to protect the gains they’ve made over the past two years like higher wages, better benefits and a government more attuned to labor than big business.
Unions remain among the most powerful political forces in Minnesota politics — supplying campaigns with volunteers, cash and cachet — though their rates of membership are at historic lows, and they’ve struggled to dissuade a significant faction of mostly male, mostly white workers from defecting to Trump.
Nowhere was that tension more apparent than in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ decision not to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, who walked the picket line with striking auto workers and cast the tie-breaking vote for a bill that bailed out union pension funds.
The Teamsters released internal polling showing that most of their members wanted to see a Trump endorsement, despite his record of stacking the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union members; and his close and needy partnership with Elon Musk, the staunchly anti-union richest man in the world. Trump once applauded Musk’s willingness to fire striking workers in violation of federal labor law, which Teamsters President Sean O’Brien called “economic terrorism.”
The Teamsters here in Minnesota have been fighting against that non-endorsement since. They quickly released their own full-throated endorsement of Harris and Gov. Tim Walz, and have been distributing pamphlets at worksites during shift changes letting their members know.
“Our messaging has been that our leadership at Joint Council 32 knows what’s in the best interest of our members and that’s Harris and Walz,” said Hannah Alstead, political director of the Teamsters Joint Council 32, which represents more than 85,000 workers across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and the Dakotas.
She said the Democratic trifecta at the state level has given them a lot of policies to talk to members about: infrastructure spending that creates union construction jobs; unemployment insurance for hourly school workers; tougher safety laws for warehouse and refinery workers; a ban on captive audience meetings in which management forces workers to listen to anti-union pitches; earned sick and safe time; and paid family medical leave.
The Teamsters have also sent at least 50 members to door-knocking campaigns organized by the Minnesota AFL-CIO, which have deployed teachers, school bus drivers, construction workers, nurses and other union members to competitive districts to connect with other union members.
Chris Shields, spokesman for MN AFL-CIO, said they’ve organized labor-to-labor door knocking efforts every Saturday since September. In 2022, they were able to engage with workers at all 114 affiliated unions in the state and make direct contact with over 220,000 voters. He said statistics on this year’s efforts would be released after the election, but said they’re on track to meet their goal.
While Garrett pitched Selle on the Democratic ticket, the SEIU pair left fliers at the homes of United Steelworkers, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota members and Education Minnesota teachers before finally catching an AFSCME preschool teacher at home.
Garrett told her that Tabke, the incumbent state representative, supports increasing pay for education support professionals like themselves (in fact, he authored the bill) and that he voted to allow them collect unemployment benefits in the summer. Unlike workers in construction and other seasonal jobs, hourly school workers like bus drivers had been barred from unemployment benefits until 2023.
“I think we’ve got a lot of momentum at the state … And I want to keep that going. I don’t want to go back,” Garrett said.
“No,” Linda Nibbe agreed.
Nibbe said she was definitely planning on voting for Harris, Craig and Tabke on Election Day. So would her husband, a former AFSCME maintenance worker for Carver County.
“That’s uplifting, isn’t it? Doesn’t make you feel good,” Garrett said on her way to the next house.
Even if Selle isn’t on board yet, Garrett plans to keep working on him. She sees him every day at work.