“We talked about Teamster issues,” O’Brien said from the lobby, which is in view of the Capitol, in response to a question from the Washington Examiner. “We talked about how important our members are in this process, the 1.3 million members and what their wants and needs are. There’s no secret that the Teamsters union is very different than most unions, and I mean that with total respect.”
O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention in July but was snubbed when he tried to do the same at the Democratic National Convention the next month.
Every major nonpolice union other than the Teamsters has backed the Democratic ticket, but O’Brien is continuing to hold out, saying he’s more interested in what a politician does for his members than what letter appears beside their name.
“We don’t just represent registered Democrats. We represent registered Republicans and independents, and we have to so we have to take that into consideration,” O’Brien said. “[Harris] recognized the diversity of our membership as it relates to political affiliation.”
The union is polling its 1.3 million members about an endorsement and says it will release the results of that survey later this week. He said the results will be released to the public, but it will only be one factor in any endorsement decision.
“The polling is not just going to dictate which direction we go,” O’Brien said, though he added that polling will be “a significant part.”
The Teamsters largely consists of truckers and UPS drivers and, as such, is a largely male, noncollege union that is believed to be friendlier to former President Donald Trump than its peers.
O’Brien had been working to set up a meeting with Harris for weeks, and he finally got it just weeks before Election Day. According to her staff, Harris arrived just after 1 p.m. for the meeting, which was closed to the press and the public, and it was the only event listed on her calendar for Monday.
Reporters did not accompany Harris’s motorcade on the trip despite that being typical practice for sitting vice presidents. A group of press was seen leaving Teamsters headquarters just before 1:45 p.m., a likely indication that the meeting had ended.
The Teamsters endorsed Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush in previous election cycles, and it sat out the 1996 election before backing Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in more recent years.
Despite that history, O’Brien said earlier this month that “we’re a very, very Democratic union.” He also reiterated his criticism of Trump over antistrike comments the former president made to Elon Musk, which O’Brien has described as “economic terrorism.”
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“Our process has been very engaged,” he said. “I know a lot of other international unions endorsed early, when President Biden was in the race, and that’s their process. Our process is a lot different, and we are going to release the results of the polling publicly so that there is no shadow of a doubt on where I membership polls.”
The Washington Examiner has contacted the Harris campaign for comment.
