Gina Raimondo Suddenly Pulling In Union Endorsements

Heading into the primary that took place earlier this month, Rhode Island’s democratic candidate for governor Gina Raimondo had notoriously little union support.

That was due to the 2011 pension reforms she spearheaded. Unions, aside from disliking the policy, thought they never got a fair shake during negotiations.

But now Raimondo is pulling in union endorsements by the dozen. Her stance on pensions hasn’t changed. So how is she doing it? The Providence Journal asked the same question:

What did Raimondo tell these unions to win their support?

Neither Raimondo, the state’s general treasurer, nor her Republican opponent, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, has been willing to make public their written answers on any candidate questionnaires they submitted in pursuit of endorsements.

Why not? They won’t say.

[…]

Gina Raimondo is on a roll, with a new endorsement almost every day this past week.

In the last week alone, the Democratic nominee for governor has picked up glowing endorsements from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 99 and an arm of the Service Employees International Union that represents “nearly 1,000 contracted janitors at office buildings in R.I.”

A week earlier, she netted the endorsement of the separate wing of the SEIU that won the right to unionize at-home child-care workers.

Raimondo has now picked up endorsements from 15 unions.

Unions have vocally opposed Raimondo’s 2011 reform efforts for years.

But it could be that they see her as the lesser of two evils; unions could have reason to believe they’d have better luck with Raimondo in office than her Republican challenger, Allan Fung.

But without the release of the questionnaires, we won’t know for sure.