How the UAW abandoned auto-workers to back radicals

Skip to content

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

One of the most consequential political races now underway is the battle to replace retiring Michigan Democrat Gary Peters in the U.S. Senate. The outcome could bring the socialist surge fracturing the Democratic Party to a screeching halt, or it could give the movement wings. It could also determine who controls the Senate for the remainder of President Trump’s time in office.

A month ago, the UAW endorsed progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat. It seems an odd anti-establishment move for a long-time Democrat ally and pal of former President Joe Biden — one that could backfire with the union’s rank and file.

It could also endanger more pillars of the Democratic Party coalition. Polling from recent elections show Black and working-class voters not supportive of democratic socialism or hard-left candidates like El-Sayed. Democrats have already lost most men; if union leaders go all-out progressive, they could bleed working-class and Black voters as well.

That would be a disaster for the party, which saw its share of the union vote increase to 57 percent in 2024, expanding on Biden’s 56 percent tally in 2020. The trend wasn’t enough to win the election, but it was one of the few bright spots for the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket.

Why would the UAW’s leadership throw their lot in with a candidate backed by the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), instead of the more moderate candidates in the race like establishment favorite Congresswoman Haley Stevens? Because college-educated liberals are driving the socialist bus and increasingly driving the UAW.

The UAW is no longer all about building cars. The union, desperate to build its shrinking ranks, has been adding members in all kinds of professions and trades, including signing up some 100,000 people who work in higher education. That group, which includes post-doctoral researchers and adjunct faculty members, now constitutes more than 25 percent of UAW membership, according to the Detroit Press, and has led, not surprisingly, to a significantly more progressive and activist union profile.

This is why the union’s 2022 changes to its election process, intended to “give a greater voice to rank-and-file members,” has instead empowered an ever-more radical constituency of university teaching assistants. UAW’s resulting leftward lurch made headlines recently in New York’s Democratic primary contests, where democratic socialist Claire Valdez won her race to represent New York’s District 7 in Congress. Valdez had previously worked at Columbia University as a program assistant in the visual arts department, where she joined the UAW. The union boasted, “UAW Region 9A mobilized thousands of members across NY-07 to help deliver a victory for New York’s working class.”

Here is what we know about Valdez: she went to the exclusive School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where tuition runs about $60,000 per year. Also, she hates cars. Her campaign embraced the normal lefty litany: abolishing ICE, Medicare for all, universal rent control and so forth. But one distinctive item was her promise to “fight to redirect federal dollars toward public transportation, walking, and biking” and “reverse the proliferation of surface highways.”

Do UAW workers on Detroit’s assembly lines know that their union’s favored candidate hates automobiles and wants to shut down federal highway spending? Is that in their best interests?

In 2024, 57 percent of Michigan’s union households voted for Harris. President Trump won 41 percent of that group’s vote, and won overall among white non-college-educated men and women. If the United Auto Workers’ leadership embraces far-left anti-auto policies and thus alienates its own members, Republicans will have an excellent shot of picking up Peters’s seat.

Democratic leaders get that. Anxious about El-Sayed becoming the party’s candidate, they pressured state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D), who was running a distant third in the race and potentially splitting the vote, to drop out, which she did on July 6.

Why the alarm? Because Democrats are desperate to take control of the Senate. Holding onto the Michigan seat is essential to that ambition. Running against the winner of the Aug. 4 Democratic primary will be Republican Mike Rogers, a veteran, former FBI agent and businessman who served seven terms in Congress. Rogers ran for the Senate in 2024, narrowly losing to Democrat Elissa Slotkin.

Party officials think El-Sayed, Michigan’s answer to Graham Platner and a pal of Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, cannot beat Rogers in the general election in November. Trump carried Michigan in 2016 and again in 2024, besting Harris, by about 1.4 percentage points. It remains a swing state; the margin was close. The districts where socialist candidates have prevailed tend to be cobalt blue; Michigan, however, is not.

Bottom line: the Cook Political Report rates this year’s Senate contest a toss-up.

Current reads on the race show Stevens slightly out in front. A Detroit News-WDIV-TV poll of 500 likely Michigan Democratic primary voters give Stevens about a 7-point lead over El-Sayed; some 10 percent of respondents say they remain undecided. That survey, though, showed neither candidate has sealed the deal, with many voters either undecided or unwilling to finally commit, leaving room for an upset.

More interesting than the top-line results, though, is the breakdown of support in the poll, which showed Stevens leading with Black and non-college-educated voters — the kind who might build automobiles for the Big Three. El-Sayed, like his progressive counterparts in other contests around the country, held an advantage with college-educated and white voters, and in particular with self-identified democratic socialists.

Recent polling aggregated by Real Clear Polling shows both Stevens and El-Sayed leading Rogers by about one half a point. On Aug. 4, we shall see which candidate Michigan’s Democratic voters think has a better chance of keeping the seat in Democrats’ hands.

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.

Tags

Abdul El-Sayed

Democratic socialists

Gary Peters

Joe Biden

Michigan

Senate

UAW

Union

United Auto Workers

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.