Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Eli | Email Lauren In pushing South Carolina to the front of Democrats’ 2024 nominating calendar, President JOE BIDEN ensured that next year’s presidential primary more closely reflects his own political interests. It’s a party leader’s prerogative. But the move hasn’t gone over well with a key Biden constituency: union members. Some rank-and-file union members and organizers in South Carolina worry that moving the first-in-the nation primary from New Hampshire to the Palmetto State will weaken organized labor’s influence in selecting Democratic nominees and leave the impression that the party is unwilling to prioritize labor. “It's a terrible idea,” said ERIN MCKEE, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Charleston. “I am disappointed that President Biden would do this.” Biden pushed for South Carolina to go first as an effort to reward the state that almost single handedly delivered him the 2020 nomination, thanks largely to Black voters. But the president also prides himself as a champion of organized labor, too. And few states have as poor a record on that front as South Carolina, which has the lowest union participation rate in the country. Roughly 1.7 percent of South Carolina’s workforce are members of a union, according to a 2021 report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s far below the national average of 10.3 percent and it lags behind the rate of other states floated to take the first-in-the-nation slot, such as Nevada (14.1 percent), Michigan (15.3 percent) and Georgia (5.8 percent). Local labor leaders recognize that South Carolina has a lot to gain economically by going first — in the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses, more than $11 million was spent at hotels in Des Moines alone. But in other potential first states, most of that money would flow to union workers. That wouldn’t be the case in South Carolina, where there aren’t any unionized hotels for Democrats to spend their campaign dollars. And there aren’t enough unionized print shops to accommodate the quadrennial influx of campaign mailers and yard signs. “There’s a lot of concern here. Democrats are supposed to advocate for labor unions and South Carolina has some trouble there,” said AMANDA ROBERTSON , a labor activist from Rock Hill. “First in the nation, as far as that being a reward for a state, are we deserving?” Labor leaders in states also being considered for early primary voting have suggested Biden is simply returning a political favor to Rep. JAMES CLYBURN (D-S.C.) — whose endorsement of Biden just before the 2020 South Carolina primary resuscitated his struggling candidacy — instead of building a primary calendar that reflects the party’s base. Already frustrated by the role Biden played in December to help impose a contract on railroad workers, they fear it could further harm the party’s long-term need to appeal to more working-class voters. And they argue that it makes little sense for the party to invest early money and time in a state that won’t be competitive in the general election. “You can't deny that Nevada and Georgia are further along than South Carolina, that's just a fact,” said CHARLIE FLEMMING, who retired as the president of Georgia’s AFL-CIO in December. “It's important and smart to focus on a place that is trending in the right direction.” National labor leaders have tried to calm any concerns. “You’ve got to look at the total picture,” said AFSCME President LEE SAUNDERS, noting that the potential new lineup of states reflects a greater overall union representation. “I don’t view it as labor being left out or being dismissed. I view it as the selection of states that make sense for demographic reasons.” But even South Carolina union members who are supportive of going first acknowledge that labor doesn’t wield much political influence in the state. Unlike in the so-called Reid machine in Nevada, for example, there is no robust union driven get-out-the-vote operation — making their candidate endorsement less necessary for presidential hopefuls. “We’re a right-to-work state and there’s not a lot of union density. Getting people to the polls in the first place is very frustrating,” said JAMES HORCH , the political director of Ironworkers Local 846 in Aiken. Sen. BERNIE SANDERS’ 2020 campaign manager and current adviser FAIZ SHAKIR, who has publicly opposed South Carolina going first, said if Biden decides to seek reelection, he is unlikely to face any serious competition. For that reason, he added, the primary calendar should be less about Biden and his allies and more about prioritizing working-class issues for the 2028 primary and beyond. “[Putting South Carolina first] definitely does discourage people from thinking about economic justice, labor issues in the course of a primary,” he said. “That is one of the most important issues that we should be focused on because it has the greatest ability to speak to people who don’t already agree with us.” MESSAGE US —Are you LINDSEY GRAHAM? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.
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