When Union Leaders and Their Members Split

New York’s GOP gubernatorial nominee, Bruce Blakeman, is betting on an unusual constituency to beat Kathy Hochul: union workers.

At the state GOP gala, Blakeman pointed to a rough stretch between Hochul and organized labor — a wildcat corrections-officer strike, a nurses’ strike, and the first Long Island Rail Road strike in 30 years — and predicted “unprecedented support from union workers.”

It’s mostly talk, for now. Blakeman has drawn little labor support beyond police unions, while Hochul has lined up endorsements from heavy hitters — 32BJ SEIU, DC 37, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, CSEA, and the RWDSU. The progressive nurses’ union backing a Republican is almost certainly a fantasy.

But there’s a real dynamic under the spin, and it’s the one worth watching: the gap between what union leadership endorses and how union members actually vote. We’ve seen this before with Donald Trump. Leaders didn’t like him, members voted for him.

Endorsements are institutional. Ballots are personal. Those two things have drifted apart over the last decade, and recent elections made the daylight hard to ignore. A union president can deliver a press release. He can’t always deliver the votes.

Do you think a union endorsement still moves its members the way it used to? I’m less sure than I once was.