Lazio has created some bad blood. He's the only politician I know who can come into your local, make a lot of promises, and break them the next day. Kittle's union is about evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, but the only thing that's kept them from endorsing Hillary is that they haven't yet been able to set a date to have her over for Roman sandwiches at the union hall in Long Island City. A measure of the solidity of Hillary's support among unions is that not one of them put an iota of pressure on her when permanent normal trade relations with China came before the Congress. Labor plays a special role for Hillary, particularly since Giuliani can no longer be used as a scarecrow to rally blacks.
Unions are the engine of minority turnout in New York.
And that's what makes the Potemkin village aspect to the unionism at the Carpenters' hall so striking. Other than that, this was a union event only in name. The celebrities here were not the heavy hitters of the labor movement but New York City politicos, most of them from the Democrats' feminist wing, like state chairman Judith Hope and city councilwoman Kathryn Freed. Nor did it sound like a union event. After a perfunctory mention of the National Labor Relations Act, labor came up almost not at all.