Teamsters presidential endorsement could come as soon as Wednesday

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters could endorse a candidate in the presidential race as soon as Wednesday.

The Teamsters is one of the largest unions in the country, and its endorsement process has been closely watched since Teamsters President Sean O’Brien became the union’s first leader in its 121-year history to speak at the Republican National Convention.

“We’ve done some research-based polling that we will be presenting to the general executive board, all three of those polling models, on Wednesday. And then we’ll deliberate, and a decision will be made then,” O’Brien told reporters Monday following a roundtable with Vice President Harris.

A Teamsters spokesperson confirmed the decision could come as soon as Wednesday.

O’Brien called Harris a “very polished person” and said they discussed issues important to the Teamsters, including the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and a veto on any national right to work.

The Teamsters also held roundtable discussions with former President Trump in January and President Biden in March.

When asked how Harris’s roundtable differed from Biden’s, O’Brien said, “There wasn’t a whole lot of difference.”

“Joe Biden’s been great for unions. Joe Biden’s, you know, obviously done a lot of work and we want to make sure that that work is carried on by whoever,” O’Brien said.

The Teamsters union endorsed Biden during the 2020 election, before O’Brien was elected president in 2021, and has historically endorsed Democratic presidential candidates.

But O’Brien has pushed back on the idea that the union should automatically endorse the Democrat, even before Biden dropped out of the race in mid-July amid concerns about his age and mental acuity.

“We don’t just represent registered Democrats, we represent registered Republicans and independents, so we have to take [that] into consideration,” O’Brien said Monday.

O’Brien called Trump “one tough SOB” during his Republican convention speech but weeks later characterized comments by the former president as “economic terrorism” after Trump floated firing striking workers during an interview with Elon Musk.

“There’s no doubt that that statement that the former president made obviously needed a reaction from me. It was a pretty strong reaction, and it was a message,” O’Brien said Monday.

Just as O’Brien sent a message from the Republican National Convention stage that his union was not beholden to one party or ideology, so too is his endorsement poised to send a message about the battle for labor support being waged by Democrats and Republicans.

A Trump endorsement would be a bellwether break from precedent that would likely raise eyebrows and ire among fellow labor leaders, many of whom were quick to endorse Harris after she launched her campaign in July.

The Teamsters have conducted extensive polling of its membership as part of the endorsement process, which O’Brien said would be a “significant” factor in the endorsement. He also promised to release the results “so that there is no shadow of a doubt on where our membership polled.”