The most pro-labor Congressional candidate of 2024
The most pro-labor Congressional candidate of 2024
A long-time union lawyer has the support of Shawn Fain and other labor leaders in the year's wildest primary
Of the more than a dozen union strikes that rocked the airline industry in the 1980s, few were more contentious or high-profile than the work stoppage mounted in 1985 by the pilots and flight attendants employed by United Airlines. Wendy Morse, one of the first female pilots for United, was pregnant while marching with co-workers in and around Chicago, and as she protested the company’s demands for another round of drastic concessions, Morse was also providing her future son his first exposure to the labor movement.
“I love to say that I've been on the picket line since I was in the womb,” John Morse told Progress Report in a recent conversation. “The labor movement has always been a part of my life, and it's really important to me because it's about fairness for everybody and ensuring that use our power to make life better and so that everyone can achieve the American dream.”
The strike ended after 29 days, but the Morse family only deepened its involvement in the labor movement. Wendy became the first woman to lead the United chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) in 2010, and not long after, John graduated law school and began working for the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA). He stayed a dozen years and worked his way up to become Associate General Counsel, a job he left late last year so that he could focus on running for Congress.
A voice for working families
When Congressman John Sarbanes announced in October that he planned to retire at the end of his ninth term, it took Democratic lawmakers and political observers in his home state of Maryland by surprise. In the absence of an obvious successor or consensus candidate, and with open seats so rare in the blue state, the primary quickly became — and remains — a free-for-all.
Candidates began declaring by November, with state legislators, small business owners, lawyers and IT professionals flooded the race early on. Some were more qualified than others, but none, Morse felt, were offering the sort of rhetoric or platform that he thought essential for such a blue seat.
“I wasn't thinking about running for Congress or anything like that,” he says. “But I watched who jumped into the race, and I was waiting and hoping to see someone who would step up and fight for the American people. I didn't see that happen.”
Morse jumped into the primary in mid-January, the 16th candidate to join what has become a massive field of 22 Congressional hopefuls. With two months before the May primary, it’s likely that at least a few long-shots and cautious politicians will drop out, but the ballot should still be split enough that a candidate who can consolidate a segment or two of the base will have a decent chance of taking a plurality and winning the nomination.
After kicking off his campaign with the enthusiastic support of Sara Nelson, the head of the AFA, Morse has earned endorsements from the UAW, CWA, and several other unions. He was also endorsed by Bernie Sanders on Monday, which speaks to both his political beliefs and the approach he’d take in office.
“My primary election is about defending our values,” Morse says. “There are some people who talk about wanting to work across the aisle and making some modest gains along the way. I'm all for working with whoever wants to help working people, but with this Congress and the Republican Party, that's just not the case. Matt Gaetz has no interest in working with Democrats on anything that's going to help working people.”
The endorsements, especially from Sanders, should provide a jolt of attention and perhaps juice the fundraising of a campaign that is largely going to depend on small dollar donors.
Working as in-house counsel for a union is an inherent rejection of the big paychecks and ladder-climbing that animates many in the legal world, while Morse’s friends in the union movement aren’t operating big Super PACs that can dump money into a competitive primary.
“It seems like all the media talks about when it comes to viability is how much money you've raised,” he says. “I understand that's important, because you have to meet these minimum thresholds to get your message out. But it's not everything. And coming from an organizing background. I think that is a tremendous mistake, to overlook people who can't raise millions of dollars.”
There are other candidates, including current state legislators and the celebrity candidate, Capitol police officer Harry Dunn, leading the financial disclosure race. Even so, Morse believes that his legal and legislative experience, as well as his connection to working people, will be key assets in the race.
“How can you afford a house when the average house price in my district is $500,000 and interest rates are where they're at now? How can you afford that down payment with exorbitant rent?” he asks, outrage rising in his voice. New studies have shown that millennials in their mid-30s now comprise the “peak” of the American population, and the 38-year-old candidate can speak to their — our, really — economic concerns, which persist even as other indicators are trending up, and help explain the recent surge in enthusiasm for organized labor.
“We graduated high school around 9/11, we faced the Great Recession when a lot of us were graduating from college, and we had this pandemic early in a lot of our careers, too,” Morse says, hitting all the lowlights that have influenced my own professional fits and starts. “How can you afford a house when the average house price in my district is $500,000 and interest rates are where they're at now? How can you afford that down payment with exorbitant rent?”
We talk a lot about housing and the cost of childcare, both of which we each understand quite well — he’s got a three-year-old, while my son is about to turn 18 months. Both are among the priorities outlined on Morse’s campaign website, which is fleshed out with a depth uncommon for a first-time candidate in a primary election While he hasn’t yet served in office, Morse touts some high-level legislative work from his time with the union, including helping the AFA navigate the turmoil of the pandemic and what it did to air travel.
Morse also spent a fair amount of time on Capitol Hill, facing down lawmakers who were not particularly interested in the well-being of union members. Among other things, Morse likes to cite the work he did with the Department of Labor to codify all flight attendants’ eligibility the Family and Medical Leave Act after airlines tried to use the profession’s unconventional schedules to deny them excused absences.
Beyond union business, Morse also worked pro bono to represent migrant children who needed help trying to survive within the Trump administration’s weaponized immigration system. He didn’t know much about immigration law at the time, but when there was a need, he felt compelled to step up.
“Running for Congress, this is not a vanity project,” Morse promises. “This is about bringing justice to working people and making sure that the voices of people in this district are actually heard. I think a lot of people have a hard time getting in front of their member of Congress and they can't relate to their member of Congress. I want to be the complete opposite.
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