BOSTON — Vice President Kamala Harris flew to Boston from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Monday, where she spent just over three hours stumping for Democratic primary hopefuls and meeting with union leaders before jumping back on Air Force Two and flying back to Washington, D.C.
“We know what we stand for. We know when we fight we win,” she told the audience at the Greater Boston Labor Council Breakfast. “Let us be clear: Our whole nation benefits from your work. Because when union wages go up, everybody’s wages go up.”
“When union workplaces are safer, all workplaces are safer,” Harris added. “And when unions are strong, America is strong.”
The vice president arrived just before 10 a.m. and was greeted on the tarmac at Logan by longtime union supporter U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. Her motorcade flew through the city, making the drive from the airport to the Boston Plaza Hotel in about 12 minutes and arriving in time to catch the end of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s speech to the union crowd.
Harris seemed to be in her element at the labor-backed political event, which hosted former President Barack Obama in 2015 and is a must-make event for candidates looking to pick up the support of the city’s many unions and their members. Many of the vice president’s remarks were hard to hear over the sound of audience cheers and applause.
Attorney General Maura Healey probably doesn’t need any political assistance and doesn’t seriously have to worry about Tuesday’s primary, because she’s running all but unopposed on the gubernatorial ticket — but she nevertheless joined Harris in firing up a crowd of hundreds of enthusiastic union members and supporters gathered to hear the vice president speak.
“There is something so special that is happening right now, here and across this country, in the labor movement,” Healey said, echoing other speakers in remarking on recent momentum among union organizers.
While Healey goes into the primary with little to concern her, labor lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan’s presence at Monday’s event may have represented her last chance to sway any labor support she hasn’t already earned.
Her race for the job Healey leaves is now in a dead heat, with an average of recent polls showing Liss-Riordan and former Boston City Councilor Andrea Campbell essentially tied — the fruit of a monthslong ad blitz funded by the more than $9 million in donations Liss-Riordan has made to her campaign from her own fortunes.
“Today on Labor Day, we reflect on the important moment that this is for working people. Across this country and across the commonwealth of Massachusetts, we are seeing such a resurgence in the labor movement,” Liss-Riordan told the crowd.
Later at a roundtable with Harris and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Markey told Harris that she and President Joe Biden are “running the most pro-union administration in history” and that as a result, “we’ve seen a 58% rise in the last nine months among union organizing.”
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