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While the rest of the U.S. left celebrated two major wins in New York’s congressional primaries in June, much of the organized labor movement was left licking its wounds.

The combined heft of New York City’s largest labor unions was not enough to best the candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the star power of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Darializa Avila Chevalier won the primary for New York’s 13th congressional district in a long-shot race against five-term incumbent Adriano Espaillat, while labor organizer Claire Valdez nabbed the open seat in the 7th congressional district in an unexpected landslide against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. One week later in Colorado, DSA-endorsed Melat Kiros kept the socialist wave building by winning the nomination in Colorado’s 1st congressional district, ousting longtime incumbent Diana DeGette, who was also endorsed by major unions.

The Espaillat and Reynoso campaigns boasted an impressive slate of endorsements from major New York City labor organizations like SEIU 32BJ, SEIU 1199, DC37, and the state AFL-CIO. Our own union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), endorsed both candidates. Reynoso was also endorsed by the influential Working Families Party, a progressive national third party, in a controversial decision that overrode the Brooklyn and Queens chapter memberships’ votes to support Valdez. And one year ago, unions overwhelmingly backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary in an ultimately unsuccessful establishment effort to crush the insurgent Zohran Mamdani.

These losses for labor-endorsed candidates underscore how a failure to engage union members and a fealty to the Democratic Party — which has manifested as a deep divide between leadership and the rank and file on Palestine — has weakened labor’s electoral influence and left it backing electoral losers.

High-profile endorsements by labor have not yielded victories because they have materially meant little more to candidates than a logo to put on their campaign literature. The backing of a union is only effective if it comes with a well-organized base of committed support, both on the campaign trail and in the voting booth. If labor unions want to win elections, they should ask themselves why the DSA is turning out so much more support.

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