It was a rough night for Labor-endorsed candidates last week, but not for lack of trying.
“I am so proud of our ground game,” said Lee Cutler, political coordinator for the North East Area Labor Council.
The NEALC targeted two races — Mark Munger’s in 3B and Pete Radosevich’s in 11A — and Cutler said door-knockers took two full passes through the district. “Unfortunately, it just didn’t go the way we wanted,” he said. The Republican shift statewide was likely a factor: “As hard as we worked, I feel like we could have done three or four passes and still not gotten the results we wanted.”
Bright spots in northern Minnesota included the election of Pete Johnson in Minnesota House 8A, the re-election of Liish Kozlowski in 8B, and the election of Duluth Central Labor Body President Derek Pederson to the Proctor City Council.
Cutler had high praise for Dave Smith, Tony Drazenovich, Jessica Langhorst, Wayne Pulford and Dakota Myllymaa. “They were fantastic — they did this work joyfully, and I’m so grateful for them.”
Cutler described Regional Organizer Brandon Shofner as “the glue that held us all together” and cited his work as key in the Labor effort.
“It’s exciting that we got Pete Johnson and Liish Kozlowski in; and it’s hard to see all of our other fantastic candidates lose,” Cutler said. “I’m happy that Harris-Walz won in Minnesota, continuing the tradition of Minnesota being the longest running blue state, but we’ve got work to do for the midterms.”
The results left many stunned but resolved to continue the fight for Labor and

its interests. In Minnesota, state AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham called on members to continue the work. “Elected leaders come and go, but the Labor Movement endures in Minnesota, across the country, and around the globe,” she said.
“While this election did not go the way we would have hoped – our mission and the work we do to improve the lives of working people, retirees, and our families — to bring economic and social justice to our workplaces, communities, state, and nation while striving to eliminate all forms and systems of oppression remain stronger than ever.”
Campaigns faced a challenge because of the late switch to Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate. President Joe Biden had a strong record of being a friend to Labor, while Harris was more of an unknown.
Labor had a little over eight weeks to get the word out about Harris and other candidates, and Burnham highlighted the hard work hundreds of union volunteers had around the state. “[They] had tens of thousands of conversations with their fellow members at work, online, on the phones, and in neighborhoods across Minnesota.”
This work led to the Harris-Walz ticket winning in Minnesota, a victory for Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and holding onto the state senate, while the state house is tied, forcing a difficult power-sharing agreement to decide which party will control different committees.
According to the Minnesota Reformer, the Minnesota House was last tied in 1979, with 67 DFL members and 67 Independent-Republicans.
Burnham was resolute about what comes next. “Like we have for generations, we accept this election’s results,” Burnham said. “However, if the incoming administration attacks the rights of workers – no matter where they were born, what they look like, how they pray, who they love, or how they identify – Minnesota’s Labor Movement will continue to stand in solidarity and fight like hell. We refuse to be divided.”
While some election post-mortems conflated the white working class, younger white men and union members in general when trying to figure out who didn’t break for the Democratic candidates, national AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler pointed out that the Harris ticket won among union members, but there is still work to do.
“We organized for months to produce a nearly 17-point advantage for Vice President Kamala Harris with union members,” she said. “But it is clear that the economic struggle working-class people are facing is causing real pain and neither party has sufficiently addressed it. This result is a blow for every worker who depends on our elected leaders to fight for our jobs, our unions and our contracts.”
Shuler sounded the alarm about Project 2025, a sweeping policy paper that calls for the elimination of regulations and any progressive advances from the New Deal through the Great Society through milestones like gay marriage and record-breaking organizing in the 21st century.
“The Project 2025 agenda promises to dismantle labor unions because we are a pillar of democracy and a check on power,” Shuler said. “We’ve seen assaults on our fundamental rights before. In the days, months, and years ahead, labor’s task will be to defend working people when it happens again. The Labor movement gives voice and clarity to the struggles of working people—that’s what we do, and what we’ve always done.
“Organized labor is the path forward,” she said. “In unions, people have power to build a stable foundation for themselves and their families … The nearly 13 million union members of the AFL-CIO won’t be divided and we won’t back down. We will be there for each other and we will fight every step of the way for every worker in this country, no matter who sits in the Oval Office.”