As 2024 comes to close, it’s the perfect time to reflect on new beginnings. Jennifer Vobis was recognized for her exceptional work as the 2022 Transportation Director of the Year, and she continued pursuing excellence in her role as executive transportation director at Clark County School District (CCSD) in Nevada.
In her “Day in the Life” video, she helped prepare her transportation team the 2024-2025 school year and shared a heartfelt farewell as retired from her position at CCSD. Tune in for a behind the scenes look at the process of prepping for a new school year, interviews with CCSD transportation staff and lots of smiles shared with Jennifer and her team.
“My time at CCSD transportation department was invaluable,” Vobis told STN.
“During my tenure, I grew both professionally and personally. I hold deep gratitude for colleagues and staff for their hard work and dedication. I wish only the best to those who continue the important work of transporting students. The work they do is critical and under-appreciated.”
Vobis helped to create and define the new transportation lead position for Amber Rideout, Vobis’ former assistant director of transportation who was promoted to the district’s assistant superintendent of transportation.
A youngster holds up a pro-union sign during a break between speeches at Labor Fest in Milwaukee Monday. Both presidential candidates are trying to appeal to union members. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
Editors note:This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.
7 States + 5 Issues That Will Swing the 2024 Election
Wisconsin carpenter Efrain Campos just retired this summer after 30 years, working mostly in commercial multi-story buildings — “from 15 floors and up,” he said. For him the last four years have been a boom period.
Efrain Campos (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
On Labor Day, Campos, 68, was among the thousands of union members and their families who turned out for Laborfest on Milwaukee’s festival grounds on the shores of Lake Michigan.
He had planned to vote for President Joe Biden for a second term in office, but when the Democratic Party pivoted to Vice President Kamala Harris as its candidate, he pivoted as well. “We need somebody to help the middle people,” he said, “so they can advance, get a little bit better than what we are now.”
Campos dismisses the notion that the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, is a pro-worker candidate despite Trump’s populist appeal that grabbed a slice of the working class electorate in 2016.
“Not at all,” he said. “It’s ignorant. He’s a rich man, he gets his way. That’s not what this country is about.”
As the Nov. 5 presidential election nears, Democrats are counting on union workers to deliver voters, particularly in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada where unions have remained an influential bloc, even as their strength has declined over the decades.
Many labor union leaders say they’re working as hard as they ever have to oppose Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump and elect Vice President Kamala Harris. The AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 unions that range from Major League Baseball players to firefighters to workers in the food industry, has endorsed Harris.
A growing share of rank-and-file union members, however, have been less likely to follow their leadership — some of them among Trump’s base.
Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, speaks on on July 15, 2024, the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images)
“It has to be recognized that union members are not monolithic in terms of the party they support,” said Paul Clark, a professor of labor and employment relations at Penn State University. “Many unions have 30, 40, maybe 50% or more of their members who either are registered Republicans or are going to support Donald Trump in this election.”
Last week, International Brotherhood of Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien announced the union’s executive council would not endorse either ticket and cited the support of a majority of his members for Trump. (The Teamsters aren’t part of the AFL-CIO).
Other union leaders insist that O’Brien is an outlier.
Nick Webber, a business agent with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and a political organizer for the North American Building Trades Unions, said, “It’s unprecedented the amount of interest in people in getting involved” as he marshals union canvassers this fall for the Democratic national ticket. He said in his conversations he’s hearing union members say “not only, ‘am I going to be voting,’ and [that they’re] tuned in, but ‘how can I get involved’ and ‘doing my part.’”
Appeals to steel and culinary workers
When Biden dropped out July 21, the national executive council of the 12.5 million-member AFL-CIO endorsed Harris the next day “because we knew that the administration that has been fighting for working people for the last three and a half years, we know what they’ve delivered, and we knew that her record spoke for itself,” said Liz Shuler, national AFL-CIO president, in an interview with NC Newsline.
In an appeal to United Steelworkers, the most powerful union in western Pennsylvania, Trump said in January he would block a potential acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan-based Nippon Steel.
Nevertheless the union endorsed Biden, who said in a visit in April he also opposed the sale. Both he and Harris reiterated that stance during a Labor Day visit to Pittsburgh. “I couldn’t agree more with President Biden: U.S. Steel should remain in American hands,” Harris said.
In Nevada, Trump held a rally in June where he proposed ending federal taxes on tipped income — an appeal aimed at the workers in the state’s largest industry, hotel-casinos.
Harris adopted the no-tax-on-tips position as well in a visit in August, a day after the powerful Culinary Workers Local Union 226, endorsed her. The union reports that its 60,000 members are 55% women and 60% immigrants.
In a return visit in August, Trump suggested his “no tax on tips” position would draw Culinary members’ support — “A lot of them are voting for us, I can tell you that,” he said.
But the union responded by doubling down on its support for Harris, who on a visit months before had celebrated the union’s successful contract negotiations with the Las Vegas Strip’s largest gambling-resort corporations.
“Kamala Harris has promised to raise the minimum wage for all workers — including tipped workers — and eliminate tax on tips,” said Culinary Vice President Leain Vashon. Vashon said Trump didn’t help tipped workers while he was president, so “Why would we trust him? Kamala has a plan, Trump has a slogan.”
Making the case
For most union leaders, the case for Harris is the stark contrast they see between Trump’s record in the White House from 2016 to 2020 and that of his successor.
Kent Miller, Laborers Union Wisconsin District Council president and business manager (Laborers Union photo)
“When you talk about the politics of what’s at stake in this election, it’s very clear,” said Kent Miller, president and business manager for the Laborers Union Wisconsin District Council.
The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, the 2022 bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which passed with only Democratic votes, opened the sluices to fund a range of investments in roads and bridges, clean energy and electric vehicle infrastructure.
The programs include strong incentives for union labor and for the enrollment of new apprentices in training programs operated by unions and their employers.
“We’ve got record membership and apprenticeship [numbers] right now,” said Miller, crediting the legislation. “Just imagine what another four years of pro-labor, pro-worker investment could do for our union, our communities and for the state of Wisconsin and our economy.”
But the messages unions have been pushing about manufacturing growth, the infrastructure advances and jobs — even unemployment rates that have fallen to just over 4% nationally and 3% or lower in states such as Wisconsin — have been slow to resonate with voters who are focused on higher prices resulting from supply chain shortages.
“Part of that is the investment is still in the works,” said William Jones, a labor historian at the University of Minnesota. “It was slow to be distributed, and it depended largely on state and local government taking it up and creating jobs. It’s possible some people haven’t felt the full impact.”
Jones also suggests there may have been inadequate messaging from the administration — something that unions are trying to make up for in their member outreach.
Beyond what Miller and other union leaders see as those bread-and-butter accomplishments are other policy stakes in who holds the White House, such as the makeup of the National Labor Relations Board and who holds the post of general counsel, the principal architect of the agency’s legal perspective.
Those differences further underscore what most union leaders see as a sharp distinction between the two tickets. “We’ve seen both these movies before,” said Webber of the electrical workers union.
Under the Trump administration the NLRB veered to positions less favorable to unions, Miller observed. Under Biden, it has issued more decisions that have supported union positions.
How much does Trump appeal?
Can the former president succeed in once again carving out some support among union voters?
In Wisconsin, union members’ connections to the Democratic Party appear to have softened since 2016, a review of survey data from the Marquette University Law School poll suggests. While about 65% of union members told pollsters they were Democrats in 2012 through 2015, that dropped to 59% in 2016 and has fluctuated since.
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, all previously reliable Democratic states with strong union political involvement, famously flipped to Trump by narrow margins in 2016, leading to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s defeat that year. All three flipped back to help carry Biden to victory against Trump in 2020.
Jones said Trump’s criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2016 — enacted under Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1993 — “helped him among a certain demographic in 2016” — primarily working class white men from rural and small town regions.
When Teamsters President O’Brien announced the union wouldn’t make an endorsement this year, the union released a poll of rank-and-file members that found nearly 60% support for Trump compared to 31% for Harris. The union said the survey was conducted by Lake Research Partners, a Democratic polling firm.
O’Brien’s announcement followed his precedent-breaking speech to the Republican National Convention in July, where he called Trump “one tough SOB,” proclaimed a willingness to work with either political party and attacked business lobbies and corporations.
“I think he feels that at least half of his members are Trump supporters,” said Clark, the Penn State professor, in an interview before the non-endorsement announcement. “And while I think he recognizes that Biden has been very pro-labor, you know, politically, I think he felt a need to sort of send a message to his members that he hears them.”
The outcome opened up a rift in the union, however. Within hours of O’Brien’s announcement, local, state and regional Teamsters bodies representing at least 500,000 members of the 1.3 million-member union endorsed Harris, including groups in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.
The pro-Harris Teamsters highlighted Biden’s role in signing legislation, included in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, that shored up the union’s Central States Pension Fund. The fund faced insolvency by 2026 after years of underfunding.
Ken Stribling, retired Teamsters member and president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions, speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Screenshot | Democratic National Convention YouTube channel)
In August, Teamster retiree Ken Stribling of Milwaukee, president of a retiree group formed to campaign for the pension rescue, addressed the Democratic National Convention to thank Biden and Harris. Legislation had circulated during Trump’s term but the former president never took action to advance it, he said.
“The Biden administration and the vice president were really the ones instrumental in making sure that we got what we deserved,” Stribling said in an interview after his convention appearance.
In a statement, Bill Carroll, president of the union’s Council 39, representing about 15,000 Wisconsin Teamsters, said Harris would also build on Biden’s pro-union record. “In contrast, Donald Trump tried to gut workers’ rights as president by appointing union busters to the NLRB and advocating for national right-to-work,” Carroll said. “Trump’s project 2025 would go even further, attacking the ability for unions to even have the ability to organize.”
The labor-related provisions in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document — billed as a blueprint for the next Republican White House — include proposals that experts have said would eliminate public sector unions nationwide, make forming private sector unions more difficult and allow states to opt out of federal labor laws. Other proposals would reduce federal protections for workers whether unionized or not.
Union messaging to members has emphasized the document and its ties to Trump, despite his repeated disavowal of the agenda and claims of ignorance about its contents.
“It is absolutely his plan,” the AFL-CIO’s Shuler told NC Newsline. “He’s had over 100 former administration officials and the Heritage Foundation basically writing the blueprint for his next term, which would eliminate unions as we know it.”
Reaching out to members
Union leaders say they’re trying to make sure their members are seeing the campaign the way they see it.
In Nevada, where the Culinary’s canvassing and get-out-the-vote effort is regarded as one of the state’s most formidable, the union boasts that during the 2022 campaign cycle it knocked on 1 million doors.
This year, UNITE HERE says it is once again mobilizing its members and plans to knock on more than 3 million doors in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and Michigan “to ensure that Kamala Harris wins the presidency.”
In Wisconsin, the Laborers are building political messaging into a union project to engage members more closely, “connecting union members with other union members,” Miller said, to explain how negotiations affect wages and health and retirement benefits, as well as the importance of increasing union representation.
“We’re a jobs club,” Miller said. The message to the union members, he adds, is that “at the end of the day it’s everybody’s right to decide who to vote for — but we want to let you guys know these are the issues at stake in this upcoming election.”
Experienced union members are holding one-on-one conversations, particularly with newer and younger members. “We’re not just doing phone calls, we’re doing job site visits, and member-to-member doing doors,” Miller said.
Webber’s work with the building trades group is similar. “We’ve been doing a lot of reaching out and making sure to have those conversations,” he said — on job sites and during union meetings.
The message: “These jobs don’t come out of thin air,” Webber says. “There’s been strategic, intentional investment for a need in the community.”
The communications don’t just focus on other union members, either, he said. “You need to be sure people on the periphery of the union hear [the message],” said Webber. “Union household members are a huge part of these conversations — a partner, a spouse or child.”
The Wisconsin law known as Act 10, enacted in 2011, has weakened the once-powerful The Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union. But Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, WEAC’s president, said the union remains active phone-banking weekly and with regular canvassing planned for October.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain speaks onstage during the first day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 19, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“We’re making the calls to ensure that our members are well educated on who’s on the ballot this go around and what they’ve done,” Wirtz-Olsen said.
Those calls focus both on the state races, where educators are hoping that a vastly different Legislature in 2025 could help unlock more funding for public schools, as well as on the national ticket.
“During the [presidential] debate we had a dozen house parties hosted by our members,” Wirtz-Olsen said. Along with Harris’ choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former teacher, as her running mate, the contrast between the Harris campaign’s support of public education and Trump’s vow to abolish the federal Department of Education “has them fired up and excited about this race.”
On Monday, the United Auto Workers union unveiled a national YouTube video aimed directly at members who might still see Trump through the lens of his attacks on NAFTA in his first presidential campaign.
The UAW has endorsed Harris. In the 3 1/2-minute video, UAW President Shawn Fain finds both Democrats and Republicans culpable for NAFTA and the factory closings over the quarter-century since it was enacted. In 2016, Fain says, “All of that pain had to go somewhere. And for a lot of working-class people, it went to voting for Donald Trump.”
The video, however, portrays Trump as a con man, highlighting his 2017 tax cut as favoring the wealthy and the USMCA, the trade law Trump enacted, as no better than NAFTA, which it replaced.
While emphasizing that “both parties have done harm to the working class,” Fain said that under Biden and Harris, “we’ve seen the tide starting to turn.”
Under Biden there’s been “more manufacturing investment in this country than at any point in my lifetime,” he says, and under Harris, “the Democratic Party is getting back to its roots.”
Paula Uhing (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)
Paula Uhing is president of the local Steelworkers union at a suburban Milwaukee factory. She’s another enthusiastic Harris supporter, but said she and other labor leaders “know that we still have a lot of work to do” to pull more union voters behind the vice president.
“We have so many union members that vote against their own interests,” Uhing said. “It’s just because they’re not paying attention, they’re not listening to the right people.”
She describes herself as “optimistically cautious,” though. One reason has been some of the conversations she’s had with coworkers.
“There are people at work who are not necessarily turning away from the Republican Party altogether, but they are considering the Democratic ticket,” Uhing said. “They’re looking at it in a completely different way than they did last cycle, which is a good thing.”
Kim Lyons, Pennsylvania Capital-Star; Hugh Jackson, Nevada Current; Rob Schofield, NC Newsline; and Andrew Roth, for Michigan Advance, contributed reporting for this story.
This story has been updated to correct the spelling of UAW President Shawn Fain.
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris debate for the first time during the presidential election campaign at The National Constitution Center on Sept. 10 in Philadelphia. A handful of issues and groups of voters in battleground states could decide the race. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Editor’s note: This five-day series explores voter priorities in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election and the nation’s future. With the outcome expected to be close, the “swing states” as they are called are often a bellwether for the country.
7 States + 5 Issues That Will Swing the 2024 Election
It’s been a wild few months in the presidential race: President Joe Biden dropped out and Vice President Kamala Harris captured the Democratic nomination. Former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and was targeted again at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Despite the historic lead-up to Election Day, the race has now settled into familiar territory: Much like 2020’s contest, top political strategists on both sides of the aisle expect control of the White House could come down to just a few thousand votes in a handful of battleground states.
“This is not going to be an election where you will see a landslide. It’s going to be won in the margins in six to seven swing states,” Democratic strategist Donna Brazile told a crowd of state lawmakers from across the country last month.
Brazile, who ran Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, shared the stage with Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, who managed Trump’s 2016 campaign and advised him in the White House.
Unsurprisingly, the pair disagreed on much.
But while speaking at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Kentucky, the two senior strategists framed the race similarly to the 2020 contest, when fewer than 50,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from an Electoral College tie.
“It is a different race. It has turned in very short time, but the issue set hasn’t changed at all,” Conway said. “And I think that’s what’s important here.”
Voters line up on the first day of early voting in 2020 in Las Vegas, Nev. (Jeniffer Solis/Nevada Current)
Like last cycle, the two campaigns are pouring millions into Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In this “Battleground” series, States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, explores the political issues and groups of voters that could make the difference in those seven states and, consequentially, in the race for the White House.
Unsurprisingly, economic issues — namely, stubbornly high prices — are proving central for many voters across the swing states. But voters also are concerned about immigration, abortion access and the future of the Supreme Court.
In states such as Michigan and Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, labor unions could prove instrumental for Harris after years of significant gains by organized labor.
In Georgia and North Carolina, Black voter turnout could make the difference, while Latino voters are closely divided in Nevada after helping propel Biden to victory there four years ago. In every swing state, campaigns are focused on all-important suburban voters.
The election’s outcome also could be shaped by the work of officials who have been debating who can vote and which votes should count since the mayhem of the last presidential contest.
This is not going to be an election where you will see a landslide. It’s going to be won in the margins in six to seven swing states.
– Democratic strategist Donna Brazile
Four years ago, a false narrative that questioned the security and integrity of elections took hold in some legislatures. New laws changed ballot-counting practices and made it more difficult to vote in many states, including swing states. In states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, there is broad concern that despite the checks and balances built into the voting system, local Republicans tasked with certifying elections will be driven by conspiracy theories and refuse to fulfill their duties if Trump loses again.
Fears that these efforts could sow chaos and delay results is not unfounded: Over the past four years, county officials in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania have refused to certify certain local elections.
With such a close race, voter turnout and motivation will be key in all the battleground states.
As in other swing states, North Carolina’s 16 Electoral College votes could hinge on how political independents vote, said Carter Wrenn, a longtime Republican strategist who has worked on many campaigns.
And those independents can be unpredictable in North Carolina: Their votes helped both Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Trump carry the state in the last two general elections.
“It’s the independents that are up for grabs, and they don’t mind splitting a ticket at all,” Wrenn said. “Ultimately, in the general election, that’s the key group.”
The economy
In every state this year, the economy is a central issue.
As Trump tries to fault Harris and Biden for the high costs of everyday living, polling shows voters blame Harris less for the situation than they did Biden — though likely voters profess more confidence in Trump’s ability to manage the economy.
For her part, Harris has unveiled plans to lower prices of rent, homebuying and groceries, arguing she will remain focused on the middle class from Day One, contrasting her ideas with what she characterizes as Trump’s catering to billionaires.
In Georgia, Republicans and Democrats alike have found success in recent statewide campaigns by highlighting similar kitchen table issues. After attending a Harris rally in Savannah last month, Georgia voter Sarah Damato said she doesn’t believe Trump will fight for the middle class.
At the event, the vice president told listeners she would lower costs by fighting corporate price-fixing and touted her proposal for a “care economy,” a set of progressive proposals including benefits for parents of newborns and credits for first-time homebuyers.
“Kamala Harris made it very evident today that the American family is the most important thing on her mind these days, and she’s going to make it easier for each one of us to have a brighter future,” Damato said.
In Kenosha, Wisconsin, meanwhile, Republican Party volunteer Sharon Buege said she supports the GOP ticket because she sees the race as a matter of “good versus evil.” Speaking outside a news conference by Trump running mate J.D. Vance, Buege said she opposed “the whole left agenda,” adding that her top issues in the race were border security, the economy, human trafficking, homelessness and “indoctrination” in public schools.
It is a different race. It has turned in very short time, but the issue set hasn’t changed at all.
– Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway
At that same news conference, a man who would only give his name as “John” said the economy and inflation mattered most: “I don’t need a reminder of why to support Trump. I can get that every time I go to the gas station or grocery store.”
Groups of voters
With Republicans looking to run up margins in rural parts of the battleground states and Democrats banking on big leads in cities, the suburbs remain pivotal.
In Georgia, diverse and growing suburbs have helped move the state from reliably red to purple.
In the state’s two largest suburban counties of Cobb and Gwinnett, Biden picked up more than 137,000 votes in 2020 over 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to data from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. The same year, Trump boosted his total by just under 32,000 votes over his 2016 performance.
The Trump campaign boasts a mighty in-state operation: nearly 15,000 volunteers signing up between mid-July and the end of August, nearly 300 events scheduled for September, and 4,000 neighborhood organizers and canvassers — known as Trump Force Captains — joining the cause in July and August.
But Team Harris says they are running the largest Georgia operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle, with more than 200 campaign staff in 28 offices. Harris’ recent visit to the more conservative south side of the state marked her 16th trip to Georgia since becoming vice president and her seventh trip this year.
Harris is hoping to fire up the young, diverse Democratic base, but her team also is hoping she can hang onto or expand on Biden’s coalition of older, affluent, educated and largely white suburbanites.
“Those are the people who are actually kind of pivotal and who will modify or change their behavior,” said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock.
“These people are largely Republicans, but they can’t bring themselves to vote for Donald Trump or for Republicans who are closely associated with him,” Bullock said.
Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia public affairs executive and political analyst, said the four suburban Philadelphia counties surrounding Pennsylvania’s largest city are key to winning that state. Once a Republican bastion, the so-called collar counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery have swung strongly in the other direction since 2016.
That complicates messaging for both campaigns, Ceisler said. Trump’s anti-abortion stance and Harris’ effort to back away from her earlier statements against fracking — both positions that appeal to rural and western Pennsylvania voters — are potential liabilities in suburbs.
Democrats have a 343,000-voter registration advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania. But the state has been decided by narrow margins in the last two presidential elections.
Daniel Mallinson, an associate professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg, noted that the Trump campaign has paid attention to Black and Latino voters.
“One of the weaknesses that Biden had as a candidate was he had weakening support among African American voters. And then Trump has actually done fairly well, particularly in some other states, like in Florida, with Latino voters,” Mallinson said, adding that Harris’ nomination changes the equation somewhat.
After Democrats seemingly all but wrote off Arizona for Biden, the contest there is proving more winnable for Harris. Biden narrowly won Arizona in 2020, but he had been hemorrhaging Latino support this year.
Employees join the picket line in September 2023 at General Motors’ Lansing Redistribution Center in Lansing, Mich. (Anna Liz Nichols/Michigan Advance)
In the manufacturing-heavy upper Midwest, labor unions could prove consequential in not only persuading voters but also motivating them to the polls.
Biden was the first sitting president to visit a picket line when the United Auto Workers last year took on the “Big Three” Detroit automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — by going on strike. That effort led to significant increases in pay and benefits for workers.
The UAW, which in August announced a national campaign to motivate its 1 million active and retired members to vote for Harris, says its membership accounted for 9.2% of Biden’s 2020 votes in Michigan alone.
“To me, this election is real simple,” UAW president Shawn Fain told a crowd of about 15,000 people last month at a rally in Detroit for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. “It’s about one question. It’s a question we made famous in the labor movement: Which side are you on?”
Political weaknesses
While Democrats are more motivated than when Biden was the presumptive nominee, they still face internal conflicts, the most high-profile of which has been about the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Dee Sull, a Las Vegas attorney who works in immigration and family law, is a registered Democrat who said she would never vote for Trump. Yet she doesn’t really want to vote for Harris, leaving her “very torn” this election.
“I believe our foreign policy in Gaza is completely ridiculous. I’m very disturbed,” she said of U.S. military aid to Israel. “If we’re going to spend money, I want it spent on my kids here — on my neighbors’ kids here.”
Sull said both parties have silenced the voices of those who protest the death and destruction in Gaza. And she was irritated that Palestinian American activists were not allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention last month.
Sull won’t sit out the election, but said she would prefer to vote for a third candidate with a viable shot at winning.
“Probably like a lot of Americans would if they had that opportunity,” she said.
For Trump, voters’ overwhelming support for abortion rights could prove a huge liability in swing states.
While Trump has wobbled in recent months on whether he would veto a national abortion ban, the Supreme Court justices he appointed dismantled abortion access across the country in 2022 — an unpopular position even in red states such as Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio that since have voted to expand abortion rights.
In Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood stopped offering abortions at its health clinics after the court’s Dobbs decision because of an 1849 “trigger” state law that immediately took effect. Wisconsin women lost all abortion services there for a year and a half, until a court re-interpreted the state law.
This summer’s shakeup has reset the race, said Amy Walter, publisher of The Cook Political Report, an independent, nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes elections. So far, likely voters in the swing states view Harris more favorably than Biden, she said. But with Trump benefiting from an electorate skeptical of the state of the economy, the newsletter characterized the race as “a battle of inches.”
The campaigns both face a lot of voters who are disenchanted with politics altogether, or else unhappy with their options.
Amy Tarkanian, a conservative television commentator who once lauded Trump to national audiences and was chair of the Nevada State Republican Party in 2011-12, said she’s at “a complete loss” this year. She remains a Republican, even after the state party heavily criticized her when, two years ago, she endorsed a pair of Democratic candidates for state offices.
“I’m not happy, or necessarily sold on Kamala,” Tarkanian said. “… But I absolutely do not want to vote for Donald Trump.”
Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small, Michigan Advance’s Anna Liz Nichols and Jon King, Nevada Current’s Hugh Jackson, NC Newsline’s Galen Bacharier, Pennsylvania Capital-Star’s Peter Hall and John Cole, Georgia Recorder’s Ross Williams, and Wisconsin Examiner’s Ruth Conniff and Henry Redman contributed reporting.
Add lithium to water in a chemistry lab, and you’ll get an incendiary reaction. The same might be said of opening new lithium mines: The prospect can spark conflicts when it comes to water.
With funding from the IRA, DOE and BIL, lithium miners have gained new financial vigor and governmental votes of confidence. Yet some worry what impact this newfound funding will have on the environment.
Through the National Environmental Policy Act, environmental impact statements are required ahead of major projects like mines, although some statements have been criticized as rushed or insufficient. But ultimately, it’s up to companies to choose and monitor their own environmental protections and community agreements, even if they’re collecting federal subsidies.
Lithium mining poses a range of risks to biodiversity and groundwater supplies, depending on the methods used. There are three main types of lithium extraction: brine evaporation, hard rock mining and clay mining.
In brine evaporation, groundwater is first pumped to the surface. There, 90% of it is evaporated away to concentrate the lithium brine, with additional freshwater needed to complete extraction.
Hard rock and clay mining often begin with “dewatering,” or removing groundwater to reach the ore, in addition to needing more water to process the ore. These methods also require chemicals such as sulfuric acid for processing, which in cobalt and copper mining has led to contamination of local water systems.
Concerned about the risks, local residents and environmentalists have resisted new mines with tactics from protests to litigation — but a government-supported lithium boom appears to be underway regardless.
New mines emerge
A Center for Biological Diversity map lists more than 125 lithium extraction projects in the western U.S. alone. Seven are inactive, and the majority are in various stages from exploration to development. Most of the proposed mines are in Nevada, predicted as a future “Silicon Valley of lithium.”
Through its loan support and EV sales incentives, the IRA has made lithium mines more profitable, and less financially risky for companies opening new ones. Several lithium companies, including ioneer, Allkem and Albemarle, lobbied for the IRA’s passage or for provisions within it. A 2023 IRA impact report from S&P Global noted “aggressive mine capacity additions” for lithium planned in countries including the United States, Chile and Australia.
Domestically, most lithium deposits are in the West, where water supplies are already stressed.
“There’s a critical minerals and specifically a lithium rush unfolding, especially, but not exclusively, across the western U.S.,” says Providence College political scientist Thea Riofrancos, who specializes in studying the impact of resource extraction on communities. She adds that some of the mining interest predates the IRA, “but it’s picked up a lot since the IRA, because that sent such clear signals.”
Yet new mines pose risks to the region’s biodiversity. In a lawsuit against a Rover Metals exploration project, the Center for Biological Diversity and Amargosa Conservancy alleged that even exploratory drilling near springs in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada would threaten endangered and endemic species. Active mines can have even bigger impacts.
“We need lithium as a part of our transition off of fossil fuels, but it can’t come at the expense of biodiversity or our most precious protected areas,” Patrick Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in announcing the lawsuit. “Some places have to be off-limits to resource extraction, and Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is at the top of the list.”
Lithium Americas’ open pit lithium mine can be seen under construction in Thacker Pass, Nev. on Oct. 10, 2023. The mine’s processing facility was recently awarded a $2.26 billion conditional loan from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. (Noel Lyn Smith / Howard Center for Investigative Journalism)
Credit: Noel Lyn Smith / Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
Thacker Pass on track
The Thacker Pass mine run by Lithium Americas is on track to become the second active lithium mine in the United States. The project in far northern Nevada may be indicative of what’s to come as more government-fueled mines pop up.
The DOE said the loan will provide General Motors with enough lithium for 800,000 electric vehicles a year and “reinforces the Biden-Harris Administration’s whole-of-government approach to strengthening America’s critical materials supply chain, which is essential to building America’s clean transportation future and enhancing our national and energy security.”
Questions about ‘voluntary’ mitigation
Lithium Americas plans to recycle and reuse withdrawn water an average of seven times. Its Phase 1 water consumption is estimated to be about 929 million gallons per year, equal to “around five alfalfa irrigation pivots,” according to the company’s blog.
Lithium Americas purchased existing agricultural water rights, so the operation won’t increase groundwater withdrawal, although existing groundwater withdrawal may still be unsustainable. It has also outlined plans for nearby habitat restoration. A post-mining reclamation plan is intended to reduce long-lived environmental impacts by refilling pits and restoring the surface.
But implementing and tracking mitigation strategies like these is left up to the companies.
“What I think is concerning is the proliferation of lots of voluntary governance mechanisms that companies don’t have to do,” says Riofrancos. “What’s important — and it sounds old-fashioned, maybe — is regulation that’s binding; that’s enforceable; that carries sanctions, fees, punishments, fines, whatever, if the regulations are not obeyed.”
Riofrancos believes such regulations, plus sustained protests against irresponsible mines, could get the mining industry to “do better.”She says the IRA-supported DOE loan program represents a missed opportunity to tie robust regulations to mining projects: “It’s very light on guardrails and requirements for loan recipients.”
It’s also unclear how much mitigation is realistically possible.
“There’s ways to tinker around the edges, but ultimately, there’s no mitigating an open-pit mine,” Donnelly, the Great Basin director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an interview. “(These mines) cause impacts to the water table, impacts to wildlife, impacts to local and Indigenous communities.”
He believes IRA loans and other federal subsidies help new mines get permitted in spite of environmental risks: “The DOE’s kind of waving a magic wand and saying, ‘This mine is okay to permit.’ ”
But the exact risks of each new lithium mine are tricky to measure. The three different types of mines can have different effects, depending on variables including location, says David Boutt, a hydrogeology researcher and professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Companies are often reluctant to share data that would help scientists evaluate impacts, he says.
“It’s hard to establish a number, like, ‘This one has like a 30% less environmental impact than the others,’ ” Boutt says. “We don’t see these numbers, because a lot of the impacts are local and hard to quantify.”
A billboard on U.S. 95 near Orovada, Nev. warns against Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass lithium mine on Sep. 9, 2023. The group, People of Red Mountain, had opposed construction of the mining operation in Thacker Pass because of environmental concerns and damage to an area sacred to Paiute and Shoshone tribes. Credit: Noel Lyn Smith / Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
Sacred site to become lithium mine
Yet for people living near mining sites, the risks can feel tangible. Dean Barlese, an elder from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, says he’s opposed to the Thacker Pass mine both because it’s at an Indigenous sacred site, and because his people’s lives are intertwined with the local ecosystem.
“A lot of people think it’s just a desert wasteland,” he says. “But the medicines we use are still out there. As Native people, we still gather our food, roots, berries — we’ve survived here for thousands of years.”
Barlese says he’d rather not see mining projects near Indigenous communities at all, regardless of community benefits agreements and environmental mitigation plans. “I would encourage the public to really look into the devastation that getting a bit of lithium does.”
Lithium demand could be reduced if investments were made in public transit and walkable communities, so fewer people were buying cars, Riofrancos says. Although the IRA includes investments in battery recycling, it doesn’t incentivize efforts to reduce surging lithium demand. Instead, it supports extraction to meet the demand, and helps ensure that the extracting companies can profit.
“ ‘Green energy’ is not green energy,” says Barlese. “Money speaks louder than anything else.”
Another possible solution to the mining debate would be an energy transition that uses less lithium.
“One way to reduce demand for lithium (or any battery metals) would be to make smaller batteries, or batteries that are more resource-efficient,” says Riofrancos. Two-thirds of current EV models are SUVs or large vehicles; small- and medium-sized EVs account for only a quarter of EV sales in the United States. Incentivizing smaller vehicles, which can use smaller batteries, could ultimately lead to fewer lithium mines.
Other battery chemistries are another option.
“Given the complexity of getting a permit, of getting the social license, of having everything in place, it’s going to take a long time (to open new mines),” says Boutt, the hydrogeologist. “And perhaps by the time we get to the point where we are developing those resources, we’ll have different battery technology where we’re not as reliant on lithium.”
Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.
Electric vehicles are gaining ground in Nevada, with new cheaper models and federal incentives enticing drivers away from gasoline-dependent transportation.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to soon issue updated pollution limits for new passenger cars and trucks that could slash billions of tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution.
And in Nevada, the push for widespread electric-car adoption by President Joe Biden could also be a boon for the state economy.
EV advocates at a press conference Wednesday highlighted how electrification has created high-paying union jobs and billions in infrastructure investments.
Nevada has pulled in $15 billion in private investment in electric vehicle and battery production, creating more than 12,000 jobs, according to a recent analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental advocacy group.
Nevada ranks fifth in the country for new investments in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. The state also ranks fifth in terms of electric vehicle adoption per 1,000 vehicles, with about 45,000 registered electric cars on the road.
Investments in infrastructure for electric vehicles have been spurred by $27 billion in federal, states, and local investments nationally.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245 in Nevada has trained thousands of union workers to meet those new demands of electric vehicle infrastructure. Hunter Stern, assistant business manager of IBEW Local 1245, said large investments in charging stations in the state have already resulted in good-paying union jobs for Nevada residents.
In 2021, the Nevada Legislature passed a mandate requiring NV Energy to implement a plan to expand infrastructure for charging stations. The utility invested $100 million in an effort to build nearly two thousand electric vehicle chargers over three years.
“That’s now jobs for IBEW members,” Stern said, during the press conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center. “We hope to install more and more charging stations at facilities like the convention center. We’ve gotten charging stations in many of the casinos and hotels here in Las Vegas, and in Reno and Sparks, but we want more.”
A recent analysis by the International Council on Clean Transportation found that the growth of charging infrastructure could create more than 160,000 jobs by 2032, while about 50% of those jobs will be electrical installation, maintenance and repair jobs.
“Those numbers are going to be skewed higher here in Nevada because of the commitment the state has already made, the plans that are being made, and the work that is coming,” Stern said.
Stern said IBEW Local 1245 in Nevada has trained more than 1,000 workers in the state to work on transportation electrification and has increased the training capacity at facilities in the state to train enough workers to meet demand.
“The state adopted an aggressive, IBEW-endorsed EV charging infrastructure plan that has already met several of its targets. We are meeting the moment,” Stern continued.
Nevada is also on track to receive $38 million from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, funding that will pay for even more charging stations in the state.
Clark County Commissioner William McCurdy highlighted the county’s plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, a goal that will require electric vehicle buy-in, said McCurdy.
“It’s our job as elected officials to address extreme heat and attain air quality standards. Nearly a third of greenhouse gas pollution comes from the transportation sector, and zero emission clean cars will protect the health of Las Vegas and help clean our air,” McCurdy said.
“We’re doing everything we can to improve our electric vehicle infrastructure,” he continued.
Electric vehicles are also becoming more affordable in Nevada, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation.
There are 37 EV models available in Nevada for less than the average new vehicle purchase price of $48,000, with 12 models available for less than $35,000, said David Kieve, president of Environmental Defense Fund Action, the political arm of the group. On average, Nevadans can save up to $27,900 on an electric vehicle compared to a gas-powered vehicle over 10 years, according to the group’s analysis.
Americans are being incentivized more than ever to purchase elective vehicles. Electric vehicle owners can receive as much as a $7,500 federal tax rebate on a new EV or $4,000 for a used one.
“If you’re not sure whether your next car, truck, or SUV should be electric, just ask one of the 45,000 people in the state who own them. Ask them whether they miss spending their hard-earned money at the gas pump, or on costly repairs,” Kieve said.
Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on Facebook and X.
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