So when rum­blings start­ed com­ing out of Ohio late last year about break­ing with the Democ­rats, many in the labor move­ment were star­tled. Last Novem­ber, in the small coun­ty of Lorain, Ohio, local labor lead­ers who were inti­mate­ly wed­ded to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment broke rank and sup­port­ed three inde­pen­dent pro-labor can­di­dates in coun­ty elec­tions, all of whom won.

The rela­tion­ship between the Amer­i­can labor move­ment and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has long been fair­ly pre­dictable. For the bet­ter part of a cen­tu­ry, labor has depend­ed on the Democ­rats for favor­able pol­i­cy, and the Democ­rats have depend­ed on labor for votes. Few from either side of the bar­gain antic­i­pate an imme­di­ate future where that arrange­ment will be upset.

The act of rebel­lion in a union-dense coun­ty gained nation­al atten­tion as a sto­ry of labor flex­ing its mus­cles — and win­ning — against a Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment drift­ing rightward.

Con­sid­er­ing Lorain along with the elec­tion of Seat­tle City Coun­cil mem­ber Kshama Sawant, the first social­ist in decades to be elect­ed to pub­lic office in a major Amer­i­can city, Jen­nifer Roesch wrote for Jacobin after last year’s elec­tions that ​“for the first time since 2000, there is a space open­ing up in main­stream pol­i­tics to the left of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.”

But just who or what will claim that space is still up for debate — espe­cial­ly in Lorain itself. Sawant’s cam­paign, run by the Social­ist Alter­na­tive par­ty, insist­ed on the need for a nation­al par­ty for the work­ing class and a break with the Democ­rats. Lorain, on the oth­er hand, saw a small group of well-con­nect­ed labor lead­ers orga­nize an insur­gency against local Democ­rats. And they did so with­out artic­u­lat­ing a clear polit­i­cal vision, instead pro­ject­ing mixed mes­sages about build­ing a polit­i­cal alter­na­tive in the city — at times intend­ing to pull the Democ­rats left and then make amends, at times reject­ing par­ty pol­i­tics alto­geth­er. And at still oth­er times, they auda­cious­ly assumed the man­tle of a new labor par­ty movement.

The Lorain Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent Labor Party

Lorain’s rebel­lion began in April 2013, fol­low­ing a major clash with Democ­rats that March, accord­ing to Jim Slone, for­mer UAW Local 2192 pres­i­dent who now serves as pres­i­dent of Lorain’s UAW Com­mu­ni­ty Action Pro­gram Coun­cil, the social jus­tice arm of the union. For near­ly three years, local unions had worked with the Lorain City Coun­cil and for­mer may­or Antho­ny Krasienko to estab­lish a project labor agree­ment (PLA), which final­ly passed in 2011, man­dat­ing that the city nego­ti­ate the terms of labor with the local Build­ing and Con­struc­tion Trades Coun­cil before tak­ing bids from con­trac­tors to car­ry out pub­lic con­struc­tion projects.

But in March 2013, new­ly elect­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic May­or Chase Rite­nauer decid­ed to scrap the PLA — a move that received praise from the Nation­al Right to Work Com­mit­tee. To make mat­ters worse, in April, as Rus­sell Salta­montes notes, the city helped break a week­long strike of around 200 garbage col­lec­tors rep­re­sent­ed by the Team­sters, with May­or Rite­nauer him­self rid­ing around in a truck with scab­bing work­ers brought in from out­side Ohio.

Rite­nauer tells In These Times that for him, ditch­ing the PLA was a prac­ti­cal deci­sion, not an ide­o­log­i­cal one, and he sees him­self as any­thing but anti-union. ​“Some peo­ple will back you, some peo­ple will back your oppo­nent. … I’ve got a lot of friends who are in a union, whether they’re rank-and-file or whether they’re part of lead­er­ship. I’ve got sup­port in labor.”

Slone sees it dif­fer­ent­ly. ​“It was very clear that the may­or had his agen­da, that he was going to try to tear labor apart, that he was going to try to destroy every­thing that we had worked to put into place,” the UAW staffer says.

The repeal of the PLA and the fail­ure of the garbage col­lec­tors’ strike were the last two straws for labor. In April, union lead­ers Jim Slone; Har­ry Williamson, pres­i­dent of the Lorain Coun­ty AFL-CIO; and Joe Thay­er, the local federation’s for­mer pres­i­dent; decid­ed to end their coop­er­a­tion with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and find favor­able inde­pen­dent can­di­dates to back in Lorain Coun­ty elec­tions. And fast — City Coun­cil and Coun­ty Com­mis­sion races were only six months away.

Over a series of meet­ings and innu­mer­able phone calls, the ​“core group,” as Williamson puts it, helped launch the cam­paign of Joshua Thorns­ber­ry, a school teacher, who would run as an inde­pen­dent for Lorain City Coun­cil. Greg Argen­ti, the own­er of an auto body shop who had already decid­ed to run as inde­pen­dent would soon get the full back­ing of labor to claim a seat on the same coun­cil. And Mark F. Craig, inde­pen­dent city coun­cilor in Elyr­ia, Ohio, would get a sim­i­lar endorse­ment (though he had been serv­ing as an inde­pen­dent since 2008). They drew sup­port from over a dozen union locals in addi­tion to those asso­ci­at­ed with the Lorain Coun­ty AFL-CIO, which took the helm of the operation.

Although labor still pledged to endorse three of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic city coun­cilors up for elec­tion in Lorain, the inde­pen­dent cam­paigns angered many in the par­ty. In Sep­tem­ber, Williamson and Thay­er received an unex­pect­ed let­ter, signed by Paul Adams, chair­man of the City Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of Lorain, Ohio, stat­ing that if they did not rescind their sup­port for inde­pen­dents and back only Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates with­in 10 days, they would not be allowed to attend par­ty meetings.

Williamson, the Lorain AFL-CIO pres­i­dent, knew he had fall­en out of favor with par­ty lead­er­ship for launch­ing the inde­pen­dent polit­i­cal ini­tia­tive. Although he hadn’t antic­i­pat­ed dis­ci­pli­nary action from local Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship, he says that he refused to be ​“dis­cour­aged from fol­low­ing my beliefs.” In the end, both Williamson and Thay­er let the 10-day ulti­ma­tum expire and were sum­mar­i­ly stripped of their duties in the city par­ty and banned from future meetings.

By Octo­ber, Thorns­ber­ry and his Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent oppo­nent Frank DeTil­lio, who out­spent him by about 17 per­cent, had shelled out a com­bined total of almost $19,000, which local news called one of the most expen­sive cam­paigns in the county’s his­to­ry. Slone says it was also an ​“old-school ground-and-pound” affair, with vol­un­teers fan­ning out to knock on thou­sands of doors.

At one point, the cam­paign­ers ordered a batch of T‑shirts that read ​“Lorain Coun­ty Inde­pen­dent Labor Par­ty.” Williamson, who has the left­overs stashed in his garage, notes that no offi­cial par­ty exists by that name, but that the T‑shirts made a good uni­form to wear to City Coun­cil meet­ings. ​“We haven’t filed paper­work or any­thing. But it does make a state­ment: ​‘We are labor. We sup­port independents.’”

An Idea with a Long History

The dream of form­ing an inde­pen­dent polit­i­cal par­ty to rep­re­sent work­ing peo­ple in the US has resur­faced peri­od­i­cal­ly on the Left for at least a cen­tu­ry. Fol­low­ing World War I, a bur­geon­ing labor move­ment turned its atten­tion to the elec­toral are­na, although orga­niz­ers nev­er suc­ceed­ed in unit­ing all the nation’s self-pro­claimed labor par­ties under one tent. Begin­ning in 1943 with the estab­lish­ment of the first polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee (PAC) by the Con­gress of Indus­tri­al Orga­ni­za­tions (CIO), labor became firm­ly com­mit­ted to the Democ­rats. Despite occa­sion­al grum­bles from the Left, the rela­tion­ship remained stable.

In 1996, labor activists attempt­ed once again to form a new par­ty for work­ers. One thou­sand four hun­dred del­e­gates rep­re­sent­ing nation­al and local labor unions from across the U.S. con­vened in Cleve­land, Ohio, to form a new Labor Par­ty which, despite sev­er­al con­ven­tions and near­ly a decade of issues-based advo­ca­cy, nev­er put a can­di­date in nation­al office before going dor­mant in 2007.

Five years after the Labor Par­ty sus­pend­ed most activ­i­ties, for­mer nation­al orga­niz­er Mark Dudz­ic says he sens­es some revival of the spir­it of a labor par­ty. ​“We’re begin­ning to see signs that peo­ple are look­ing for a way to devel­op inde­pen­dent work­ing class pol­i­tics, and I think Lorain is [a] very hope­ful [devel­op­ment] in that con­text,” he says, not­ing that Sawant’s vic­to­ry, facil­i­tat­ed by an orga­nized polit­i­cal par­ty with nation­al coher­ence, was last year’s true headliner.

Many of the key fig­ures in Lorain’s labor coup had not heard of the ini­tia­tive for a nation­al Labor Par­ty. Jim Slone, the for­mer UAW local pres­i­dent, thinks the idea could gain some traction.

“I wouldn’t be sur­prised if [a Labor Par­ty] cropped up again,” he says, but adds that he’d have to see ​“what they stood for” before decid­ing to get involved.

In her 2012 book Inde­pen­dents Ris­ing, Jacque­line Salit points out that ​“inde­pen­dent” and ​“third-par­ty,” though often used inter­change­ably, are not always the same thing.

“There is no real third-par­ty move­ment in Amer­i­ca today,” Salit writes. ​“But there is an anti-par­ty move­ment, one that is being orga­nized and shaped by diverse influ­ences.” In Lorain, the dis­cus­sion on which camp to join is still unfolding.

For Slone, the cre­ation of a labor coali­tion was essen­tial, assert­ing that unions in Lorain were only able to push back against the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty because they formed a polit­i­cal bloc.

“[We said] your issues are my issues and my issues are your issues, and the things that we dis­agree on, we throw them in the cor­ner, we don’t talk about them,” Slone recalls. ​“And when we get every­thing tak­en care of that we agree on, we find out there’s very lit­tle left in the corner.”

One Year In

For the past nine months, Thorns­ber­ry and Argen­ti have served on the Lorain City Coun­cil as inde­pen­dents along­side nine Democ­rats, and they have a lit­tle over one year left in their first terms. By all accounts, there has been no rev­o­lu­tion in Lorain, and the lead­ers of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty have been talk­ing with labor lead­ers Williamson and Thay­er about end­ing their exile from the party.

Mean­while, the two inde­pen­dent coun­cil mem­bers have been inte­gral to sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to ben­e­fit Lorain’s work­ing class.

When reports of union-bust­ing at Cama­co, an auto parts fac­to­ry in the coun­ty, reached City Coun­cil, Thorns­ber­ry and Argen­ti worked with anoth­er labor-backed coun­cilor, Demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­cil­man Bri­an Gates, to pass a res­o­lu­tion in June defend­ing the work­ers’ right to union­ize. Thorns­ber­ry and Argen­ti also helped tack­le the issue of the lost Project Labor Agree­ment, ally­ing with sev­er­al oth­er coun­cilors to strength­en the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing city-fund­ed con­struc­tion work.

When May­or Rite­nauer snubbed labor and repealed the PLA in March 2013, he passed a new plan to gov­ern con­struc­tion work. The plan nixed the require­ment that con­trac­tors use a union­ized work­force, dropped the hir­ing require­ments from 75 per­cent to 25 per­cent local labor, and raised the bar on the size of the projects impli­cat­ed, so that the agree­ment applies only to projects with bud­gets of more than $2 million.

Spon­sored by Coun­cil­man Tony Richard­son (one of the three city coun­cil Democ­rats endorsed by labor in the last elec­tion), amend­ments to the stand­ing labor agree­ment will apply to all projects over $250,000 rather than $2 mil­lion; and will raise hir­ing goals from 25 per­cent to 50 per­cent local labor, from 9 per­cent to 20 per­cent minor­i­ty, and from 7 per­cent to 15 per­cent female.

Slone says the new agree­ment is a bit ​“watered-down” — unlike the for­mer mayor’s project labor agree­ment, it makes no dis­tinc­tion between union and non-union labor, for instance. But Slone says he is not dis­ap­point­ed in the independents.

“We’re only a year out,” he says, ​“so they’re just mov­ing along, doing the things that they promised and work­ing on the ones that they know they can read­i­ly get some res­o­lu­tion on.”

The Future of the (Unof­fi­cial) Lorain Inde­pen­dent Labor Party

While Lorain’s inde­pen­dents have suc­ceed­ed in push­ing pro-work­er poli­cies, the ques­tion of whether the break with the Democ­rats will have any impact beyond Ohio remains to be seen.

“Local pol­i­tics has its own dynam­ic,” says Daniel Schloz­man, pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at Johns Hop­kins University.

Schloz­man thinks the Left often mis­takes local inde­pen­dent cam­paigns as har­bin­gers of a nation­al third par­ty, when in fact upsurges like the one on Lorain do not ​“scale up to be a sto­ry about nation­al pol­i­tics.” This is because labor and oth­er local play­ers have much more free­dom to chal­lenge local polit­i­cal parties.

He points out that in states with non­par­ti­san munic­i­pal elec­tions, in which can­di­dates do not declare par­ty affil­i­a­tion, ​“The sto­ry of dis­si­dent unions over­throw­ing nom­i­nal­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic offi­cials is a total non-sto­ry. It only becomes a sto­ry when they are reject­ing the par­ty label.”

Of course, this is pre­cise­ly what labor did in Lorain last year: They turned away from the two major polit­i­cal par­ties. Such a move, though more com­mon local­ly than fed­er­al­ly, remains rare in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, so Lorain’s res­i­dents are not the only ones inter­est­ed in how the sto­ry plays out.

One year after the inde­pen­dent elec­tion cam­paign, the rela­tion­ship between labor and the Democ­rats in Lorain ​“pret­ty much still sucks” in Slone’s words. ​“There’s a big rift,” he says, ​“and it looks like it’s going to con­tin­ue for a while.”

At the annu­al Lorain Labor Day cel­e­bra­tion spon­sored by local unions, Lati­no activist and insur­ance agent Tim Car­rion announced his bid for may­or in 2015 — pos­si­bly as an inde­pen­dent — and cam­eras in the crowd were soon snap­ping pho­tos of Williamson rais­ing the right hand of May­or Ritenauer’s pos­si­ble challenger.

Car­rion, a col­league of Williamson’s in the Lorain Vet­er­an African-Amer­i­can Lati­no and Union Coun­cil (VALUs), says he caught the atten­tion of labor because his activism and his pol­i­tics ​“real­ly lends itself well to the whole labor move­ment” and his bid for office ​“is about our work­ing-class peo­ple. This is about ben­e­fit­ting and meet­ing the needs of those peo­ple who have real­ly built this community.”

Williamson had heard that mem­bers of the city’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty, who were in the audi­ence, were unhap­py that the same labor lead­ers who sup­port­ed inde­pen­dents Thorns­ber­ry and Argen­ti are now plan­ning to back a can­di­date against the cur­rent Demo­c­ra­t­ic mayor.

But Lorain City Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Chair­per­son Paul Adams is still try­ing to pull the rogue labor lead­ers back into the fold, and lead­ers are enter­tain­ing his peace­mak­ing offers. Adams says that he has had ​“pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tions” with the inde­pen­dents and their read­mis­sion to the par­ty is a mat­ter of ​“when, not if.”

Which isn’t com­plete­ly sur­pris­ing, because labor nev­er made a clean break from the Democ­rats. While Williamson and Thay­er were sus­pend­ed from the City Par­ty, they remained on the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee of the Coun­ty Par­ty. As far as Slone is con­cerned, he man­tains that he’s still a Demo­c­rat, but he’s ​“going to stay a labor Demo­c­rat,” mean­ing aloof from the dic­tates of the par­ty and com­mit­ted to the labor movement.

The inde­pen­dents in Lorain con­tin­ue to ori­ent them­selves toward the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, hop­ing to teach its lead­er­ship a les­son, and even­tu­al­ly make amends rather than split­ting off per­ma­nent­ly. Thorns­ber­ry says he looks for­ward to a time in Lorain Coun­ty when ​“the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty wakes up and no longer takes labor for grant­ed in our par­tic­u­lar coun­ty” so that unions and the par­ty ​“can form a peace based on help­ing each oth­er and mutu­al respect.”

This goal of the Lorain inde­pen­dents may come as a dis­ap­point­ment to those on the Left who are com­mit­ted to per­ma­nent­ly break­ing from the two-par­ty sys­tem and form­ing a nation­al Labor Par­ty. Mark Dudz­ic, the for­mer Labor Par­ty orga­niz­er, would like to see the Lorain labor lead­ers turn their ​“inde­pen­dent labor par­ty” rhetoric into a reality.

“There have always been these hope­ful efforts to pull the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to the left,” says Dudz­ic, ​“They some­times suc­ceed for a short peri­od of time or around lim­it­ed goals, … but they don’t have a strate­gic vision about how to change real pow­er rela­tions and build pow­er for work­ing peo­ple on a long-term basis.”

Nev­er­the­less, he admires the nerve required of Lorain activists to swim against the two-par­ty tide and believes it is one of the first steps toward a nation­al Labor Par­ty: ​“Those folks are clear­ly part of a move­ment that’s search­ing for a voice for work­ing people.”

It may have a blur­ry out­line, but the move­ment in Lorain express­es a clear dis­con­tent with the right­ward shift of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, espe­cial­ly in its atti­tude toward orga­nized labor. This mes­sage, as Dudz­ic sug­gests, is being relayed in polit­i­cal races across the country.

“My under­stand­ing,” says Tim Mee­gan, inde­pen­dent can­di­date for alder­man in Chicago’s 33rd ward in 2015 and a mem­ber of the Chica­go Teach­ers Union, ​“is that Lorain is an over­whelm­ing­ly union town, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty wasn’t rep­re­sent­ing the inter­ests of the work­ers, so they took it upon them­selves to run their own can­di­dates. … We find that inspir­ing. We’re try­ing to do the same thing in Chicago.”

Jess Spear, the Social­ist Alter­na­tive par­ty can­di­date who will face off against Demo­c­ra­t­ic Speak­er of the Wash­ing­ton House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Novem­ber, took most of her cues from her fel­low par­ty mem­ber Kshama Sawant, but was also gal­va­nized by what hap­pened in Lorain.

“To see labor take a step out­side the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and run as inde­pen­dent, it’s show­ing the way for­ward.” She argues that even small left-wing inde­pen­dent cam­paigns can inspire those dis­il­lu­sioned with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty with the con­fi­dence ​“that we can build an alter­na­tive par­ty for the 99 percent.”

Whether the split between labor and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is tem­po­rary or per­ma­nent, the ongo­ing peace talks between the Democ­rats and labor lead­ers haven’t quelled labor’s urge to become the dom­i­nant polit­i­cal force in the coun­ty. Activists are aware that if Car­rion runs as an inde­pen­dent can­di­date for may­or in 2015 with labor’s back­ing, it could burn yet anoth­er bridge back to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. And, always care­ful to qual­i­fy that it’s not offi­cial, mem­bers of the core group still like to call them­selves the ​“Lorain Inde­pen­dent Labor Party.”

Despite his short-term goal of bring­ing the Democ­rats around to the inter­ests of labor, coun­cil mem­ber Thorns­ber­ry also holds a more rad­i­cal vision of the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape in the long term. He was only 15 when the Labor Par­ty held its found­ing con­ven­tion in Cleve­land, but the inde­pen­dent city coun­cilor lights up when con­sid­er­ing the prospect of a polit­i­cal par­ty for workers.

“We need a third par­ty choice, whether you call it the Labor Par­ty or the Pro­gres­sive Par­ty,” Thorns­ber­ry says. ​“I think that’s what is need­ed at all lev­els of government.”

Lorain union­ists are search­ing for the best way to assert the polit­i­cal pow­er they clear­ly pos­sess, sep­a­rate from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Though Lorain’s labor lead­ers have no offi­cial line on the future of the move­ment, their vow to sup­port a can­di­date of any par­ty or no par­ty so long as that can­di­date sup­ports them could be the begin­nings of a par­ty line. If labor can repeat its inde­pen­dent upset in 2015 by oust­ing a Demo­c­ra­t­ic may­or, elect­ed offi­cials and fledg­ling can­di­dates will know that stay­ing on the right side of unions is nec­es­sary to win elec­tions. Whether that trans­lates into a long-term inde­pen­dent labor par­ty will depend on just how far Lorain’s union­ists are will­ing to stray from the Democrats.