Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a top contender to be Vice President Kamala Harris's running mate, said Wednesday he’s all in for pro-labor legislation known as the PRO Act and insisted he always has been.
But Kelly is one of three Senate holdouts in the Democratic Caucus yet to co-sponsor the measure that proponents say would make it easier for workers to form and join unions, and in years past has expressed opposition to passing the bill in its current form.
The battleground-state senator, who's emerged as one of Harris's top potential vice presidential candidates , has been panned by left-leaning union leaders in hopes of swaying her to reassess, or outright reject, picking him as a running mate.
“From the day I got here, I was planning on — I always said I would vote for the PRO Act. There's still some things we're working on to try to make it better,” Kelly, who took office in 2020, told the Washington Examiner. “Whether it was day one of when I got sworn in or today if it came to the floor, I would vote for it.”
Kelly noted his parents were union members as police officers and that he hails from a “union family” of police officers and firefighters.
“For that reason, and also because unions are so important to working everyday people, I've always supported the PRO Act,” he said.
The PRO Act advanced from a committee last year that Kelly does not sit on, but Democratic leadership has not brought it to the floor for a full vote.
Kelly rejected the notion that his public embrace of the legislation, which would also penalize illegal union-busting, prevent employers from permanently replacing those on strike, and nullify state right-to-work laws, is in any way tied to his possible political future on a presidential ticket.
“That's always been my position. That's been my position on the PRO Act since the day I got here,” he stated.
But some of the current and former leaders at the country’s largest labor organizations disagree.
“Only 3 Democrats refused to sign on to the Pro Act, one of whom was Mark Kelly,” Richard Bensinger, former organizing director at the AFL-CIO, recently posted on social media. “The right to organize unions is the most important thing to labor, so that's a hard no.”
The AFL-CIO endorsed Harris this week. But an affiliate of it, the Transport Workers Union, has not. That decision will be left to TWU President John Samuelsen, who has criticized Kelly for his statements on the PRO Act and past labor legislation.
“Kelly’s police union story is diminished by his refusal to support the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which reverses Janus and grants all public sector workers the right to organize and bargain contracts,” Samuelsen wrote on social media. “Combine this with his Pro-Act refusal and a pattern becomes undeniable.”
Kelly recalled that when he was younger and his mother was injured, “it was the union that got her her benefits.”
“So, I see the value of unions, and I come from a union family,” he said.
Kelly previously expressed concerns about the PRO Act to HuffPost in 2021 over giving collective-bargaining rights to independent contractors, stating that he wanted “to see some changes.” He was open at the time to approving certain provisions through a budgetary process known as reconciliation.
“Depending on how it’s done, I’m not necessarily opposed to that,” Kelly told HuffPost at the time.
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The apparent concerns with Kelly from some in the labor movement evidently failed to persuade his home state party. The Arizona Democratic Party on Wednesday endorsed him for vice president, saying he's been "a champion for Arizonans, engaging them in the path towards building a better Arizona and creating a strong and diverse coalition along the way."
"The path to the White House runs through Arizona, and we are confident that with Kamala Harris and Mark Kelly at the top of the ticket, Democrats will win in November," state party Chairwoman Yolanda Bejarano said.
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