Quote:Joe Biden has pitched himself to voters as a “union man,” a son of Scranton, Pa., who respects the dignity of work and will defend organized labor if he wins the White House.

To rank-and-file members in some unions, especially the building trades, it doesn’t matter. They’re still firmly in Donald Trump’s camp.

Labor leaders have worked for months to sell their members on Biden, hoping to avoid a repeat of 2016 when Donald Trump outperformed among union members and won the White House. But despite a bevy of national union endorsements for Biden and years of what leaders call attacks on organized labor from the Trump administration, local officials in critical battleground states said support for Trump remains solid.

“We haven’t moved the needle here,” said Mike Knisley, executive secretary-treasurer with the Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council, who estimated that about half of his members voted for Trump in 2016 and will do so again. “Even if given all the information that’s been put out there, all the facts — just pick an issue that the president has had his hands in — it doesn’t make a difference.”

Among members of North America’s Building Trades Unions, there is a dead heat in six swing states, with Biden receiving 48 percent of the vote and Trump 47 percent, according to an internal poll shared with POLITICO.

“He has a very, very, very solid foundation of our members,” said James Williams, a vice president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, whose surveys of members painted a similar picture. “They connect with his messaging and a lot of the fear-mongering going all the way back to when he was first elected with, ‘Be afraid of the immigrant. The immigrant’s here to take your job.’ That resonated with our membership. They feel like their way of life and their way of living is under attack and without really understanding the dynamics at play. I mean, the immigrant worker is being abused by employers.”

Trump’s support in some unions could provide an opening for him in the Midwest, particularly in the key Rust Belt states that powered Trump’s victory in 2016 — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — where union voters have a sizable impact. Roughly one in six voters nationwide is either a union member or comes from a union household, according to a Gallup Poll earlier this month, and that number rises to more than one in four in states like Michigan.

Those voters, historically a bedrock of Democratic support, shifted away from the party in 2016, according to exit polls. Hillary Clinton won union voters by less than half as much as former President Barack Obama had four years earlier — and that swing alone may have been enough to account for her losses in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, one analysis found. Even if Biden takes back the White House, there could be far-reaching impacts on the Democratic Party and labor movement if that trendline persists.

The question this year is whether Biden can win those union members back, and by how much. Some labor leaders said there is cause for hope for Biden: While many Trump voters remain firm in their support, they said, Biden is winning over more of their members than Clinton did. They attributed that in part to Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re seeing a whole different attitude toward Joe Biden than we saw mostly because Trump has a record of failure. Biden has a record of being there for us,” said Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. “It’s just a different feel out there. Obviously, we still have members who support Trump.”

Though it showed a virtual tie, the NABTU survey represented a seven-point drop for Trump from March, the first change for the president in two years, said Sean McGarvey, the union president. He attributed the change to Trump’s management of Covid-19, calling it “the greatest mistake of his presidency.”

“It’s going to be close among my members between Biden and President Trump, but there’s been dramatic change in the last six months,” McGarvey said, adding that if Trump had been more aggressive toward the coronavirus, “He’d be bulletproof. We wouldn’t even be talking about Joe Biden now.”

However, even as they praise the Democratic presidential nominee as a less-flawed candidate than Clinton, other union leaders said they fear there’s nothing they can say to the Trump supporters among their ranks to sway their opinion between now and November.

They said parts of Biden’s record, such as his past support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, hurt him, and that some members still look to the pre-pandemic economy under Trump as a high point.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s anybody changing their minds,” said Don Furko, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1557 in Clairton, Pennsylvania, who said the majority of his membership is backing Trump.

In northern Minnesota, local USW officials are working to educate members on steps Trump has taken to attack organized labor and encouraging them to vote for their jobs rather than on social issues like immigration, said John Arbogast, staff representative for District 11. But, he added, “you’re not going to change a Trumpster’s opinion.”

TJ Ducklo, Biden’s national press secretary, said the former vice president “sees this election as Park Avenue vs. Scranton — a choice between someone who has always stood up for working people and believes this country was built by unions, and Donald Trump, who punishes the middle class with tax cuts that only benefit him and his rich friends.”

Samantha Zager, deputy national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said, “Throughout his 50 years in politics, Biden has consistently put special interests ahead of American workers — including in his promise to shut the economy back down if he were elected — and that’s why President Trump is seeing strong support from union members.”