Four key takeaways from Kamala Harris’ CNN interview
Kamala Harris talks about how she learned of Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race, and Tim Walz comments on his son’s viral moment at the party convention.
In a city with a long labor history, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris promised to protect workers’ rights if elected and portrayed her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, as an enemy of workers in a Labor Day speech Monday at Northwestern High School in Detroit.
“It’s always nice to be in the workers’ house,” Harris said at the start of her brief speech in the high school gymnasium. As she took the stage, Harris hugged a group of union leaders who greeted her beneath a blue banner that read “Union Strong for Harris-Walz.”
“Don’t we love Labor Day?” Harris asked the many workers in their union T-shirts who applauded her. She repeated a well-known Democratic campaign slogan that unions helped build the middle class in the United States.
Harris said all workers, including those who are not members of a union, have benefited from strongly unionized workplaces.
“Everywhere I go, I tell people, ‘Look, you may not be a union member. You should thank a union member,'” Harris said, drawing applause. “For the five-day workweek, you should thank a union member. For sick leave, you should thank a union. For paid vacation, you should thank a union.”
Harris criticized Trump as a bitter opponent of labor rights, saying he has blocked overtime pay for millions of workers, opposed efforts to raise the minimum wage, appointed “union busters” to the National Labor Relations Board and supported right-to-work laws that allow workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to be exempt from paying union dues and fees.
“Trump is a strikebreaker,” chanted the crowd in response to the litany of attacks against Trump.
“But here’s the thing: We have a choice here,” Harris said. If elected, she promised to pass the PRO Act, which would give workers more power to organize.
Harris follows in the footsteps of many presidential candidates who have visited the Motor City to campaign on Labor Day. And Harris’ visit is her first to Michigan – a key battleground – since she formally accepted her party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The latest Free Press poll shows Trump leading Harris by one percentage point in both the head-to-head race and the four-way race involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who has suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump — and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. The poll, by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA, surveyed 600 active and likely voters in Michigan between the last day of the Democratic Convention and last Monday and had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
“We know this is going to be a very close race,” Harris said.
Harris’ abbreviated presidential campaign, launched after President Joe Biden’s exit in late July, aims to portray her as a champion of workers’ rights and portray Trump as an ally of billionaires who does not stand up for the middle class.
Laborers’ International Union of North America President Brent Booker opened the Harris rally. He praised Harris’s commitment to labor rights, saying she joined striking workers on the picket line and led a task force to organize workers. Booker said he had never seen a more union-friendly president than Biden and said Harris would carry on Biden’s legacy.
The Democrats from Michigan also emphasized Harris’ support for the unions on stage and denounced Trump as a candidate who wanted the support of union members for his election campaign but would turn his back on them in the White House.
“Union members deserve better than the failed anti-worker policies of the Republican Party and Donald Trump. Look, if your most famous line is ‘you’re fired,’ then you certainly don’t understand workers,” said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a national co-chair of Harris’ campaign. She called Trump an out-of-touch rich man. In contrast, Whitmer said, the middle-class roots of Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, help them understand the economic challenges facing voters.
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If elected, Harris has repeatedly said she will make building the middle class one of her main goals. That’s an economic message the vice president should continue to focus on as she tries to build support for her campaign, said Dwan McGrady, 55, of Detroit, who attended the Harris event. McGrady is a preschool teacher for children with special needs in the Detroit Public Schools Community District and a Harris supporter. She said a union-friendly president is very important to her and that Harris represents a stark contrast to Trump in that regard.
“She is very pro-union,” McGrady said of Harris.
Outside the event, about two dozen Harris critics, outraged by her refusal to call for an embargo on U.S. arms sales to Israel, shouted pro-Palestinian slogans and called the vice president “Killer Harris” within earshot of her supporters who were lined up to see Harris.
There were no campaign events planned for Trump on Monday, but the Michigan State Republican Party held a press conference with Trump-supporting auto workers.
Victoria LaCivita, communications director for Team Trump Michigan, said Harris’ policies would hurt workers, pointing to energy initiatives to curb climate change, including industry policies to transition the auto industry to electric vehicles, which LaCivita described as a ban on gasoline-powered cars, while Harris’ campaign team said the vice president does not support an electric vehicle mandate. “President Donald Trump will lead us back to an energy plan that covers all of the above, protects Michigan’s auto jobs and supports American workers,” LaCivita said.
After a stop in Detroit, Harris was scheduled to appear in Pittsburgh at a campaign rally with Biden. It was their first joint campaign appearance after Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Harris as his successor. Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, was campaigning in Milwaukee the previous Monday.
In 2016, Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – so-called “blue wall” states because they had not supported a Republican presidential candidate since the 1980s. Biden won all three states in 2020, defeating Trump. The trio of swing states could again decide the election in the fall.
Contact Clara Hendrickson at [email protected] or 313-296-5743. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @clarajanehen.
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