Labor Backs DeLauro; Battle For Nation’s ​“Soul” Invoked

“Over my dead body,” Rosa DeLauro declared to a rousing union endorsement rally, ​“will they rescind that funding.”

“They” are President Donald Trump and some of his Republican allies in Washington.

“That funding” is $30 billion in non-defense spending — for transportation, for mental health, for job apprenticeships — that DeLauro and her Democratic allies got inserted in the latest budget Congress passed. Since the bipartisan budget passed, Trump and some Republican Congressmembers have called for rescinding that portion.

DeLauro made the ​“dead body” declaration to illustrate what labor can expect from her in return for backing all her campaigns for the Third U.S. Congressional District seat since she first won it in 1990.

DeLauro made the declaration Monday evening to a full house at First & Summerfield Church, where members of Yale’s and the Omni Hotel’s unions gathered to cheer her on for a 15th two-year term as New Haven’s Democratic U.S. Congresswoman.

The endorsement officially came from UNITE HERE Local 34. It coincided with an announcement that the Greater New Haven Central Labor Council has voted to endorse her too. (The state AFL-CIO has already endorsed her reelection campaign.)

At this point, there’s nobody else to endorse in the Third District. Since DeLauro’s is considered the safest of safe seats, the Republicans generally put the name of a little-known person on the ballot who barely campaigns and receives little to no party support. So far the GOP doesn’t even have a candidate yet, according to state Party Chairman J.R. Romano.

This year DeLauro expected a Democratic primary challenge, from the left. But that challenger, Bryan Anderson, suspended his campaign last week.

“Our feet go in the street. That’s the way we flex,” Central Labor Council President and UNITE HERE Local 35 President Bob Proto remarked in introducing DeLauro, referring to the Yale unions’ statewide status as a top vote-pulling force on Election Day. ​“We actually do the work. And we get noticed. That’s the way you make change: You support people like Rosa DeLauro.”

“I believe you standing with me led my opponent not to take up this fight,” DeLauro told the First & Summerfield crowd. (Yale’s clerical and technical workers union held some of its original organizing meetings in the basement of DeLauro’s home.)

So Monday night’s rally became more about what’s at stake for labor in Democrats’ nationwide quest to take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives, in which Republican are now the majority.

DeLauro spoke of Republicans’ efforts to ​“turn back” union organizing and bargaining rights, weaken the National Labor Relations Board, depress wages, and weaken consumer regulations — even, recently, to ​“take your tips away.” (Read about that here.)

She spoke of how 83 percent of the benefits of the new tax cut law go to the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers.

“Corporations and the millionaires and the billionaires,” DeLauro declared, channeling her D.C. allies Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, ​“are writing the rules that make government work for them at the expense of American workers.”

“This is the most critical election we will face in our lives,” she said.

DeLauro noted that she is the ranking Democrat on the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, where issues most important to unions and wage-earners survive or die.

“We win the House back,” she said, ​“I get to chair that committee. Then we get our agenda” back on track.

That produced one of the loudest whoops in a loud and high-energy hour-long event.

DeLauro closed with a note of optimism: ​“We will take back the soul of this country.”

Then, after it was all over, a speed round of hugs commenced in the hall before DeLauro raced out to the next event in her cleared path to two more years — adding up to three decades — in the halls of Congress.

Click on the video the watch the rally.