In 2018, our Statewide Political Advisory Committee met in May and June to make endorsements of candidates for legislative races on the primary and general election ballot.

“I am so impressed by the caliber of members on this committee who have volunteered countless hours the last couple of months to ask the hard questions of those seeking elected office,” said John Scearcy, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters 117. “They take the time to consider every candidate we endorse and make thoughtful decisions. We want to make sure the candidates we are picking share our Union’s values.”

Our 5-person committee this year represents members from both the public sector and the private sector.

Here’s how our endorsement process works:

• Back in May, our Political Advisory Committee finalized our 2018 Teamsters 117 Candidate Questionnaire, which we require every candidate who wants our endorsement to fill out.
• Candidates return their questionnaire and we schedule them for a 30-minute interview with our committee.
• We ask candidates questions about their questionnaire, their background, and their plans to win the election.
• We then make decisions about which candidates to advise our full Executive Board to endorse and whether to make a campaign contribution to their campaign. Contributions to candidates ONLY come from our Teamsters 117 Working Families PAC - we don't use dues dollars to make contributions to candidates.
• We then send the recommendations to our Executive Board which ultimately makes the final decision to endorse a candidate or not.

In politics, we only have permanent issues – we don’t have permanent friends. This means we continually need to hold politicians accountable for the votes they take and to make sure we hold them to what they say they are going to do.

The only way we do that is to have members involved.

If you are interested in participating on our Statewide Political Advisory Committee in 2019, please contact our Political Director Dustin Lambro at 206-441-4860 x1262 or via email [email protected].