Ryan Kominakis opened his energy bill several months ago and decided on the spot to run for state representative in Indiana’s 4th District.
He saw his bill double virtually overnight because of exorbitant rate increases, which ultimately forced some financially strapped consumers to turn off the lights, lower the thermostat, and shiver through the winter.
That kind of indignity proved to be the final straw. Ryan, a section griever with United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1066 at U.S. Steel’s Gary Works, long ago tired of watching the state’s corporate-friendly leaders give huge tax breaks to the wealthy while ordinary families struggled to make ends meet.
He realized what’s becoming clearer and clearer to working people. We have to elect more of our own to public office if we want a government that works for us.
“I still work 12-hour shifts and swing shifts on the shop floor,” Ryan said, highlighting the credentials setting him apart from his opponent, a 20-year incumbent and former airline industry vice president who once referred to members of the public as “noise boxes.”
It isn’t just the budget-busting energy bills pushing families to the margins, observed Ryan, a crane operator and Marine veteran of Afghanistan.
“Gas prices, food prices, childcare—they all cost more,” he said. Yet, he points out, his opponent ignores these struggles and “legislates like a corporate executive,” even threatening to derail a town’s funding after the mayor criticized the skyrocketing utility bills.
This is what happens when the privileged elbow their way into office to serve themselves and others of their ilk, throwing everyone else under the bus.
It’s so pervasive that many of us no longer have true representation, according to a 2024 study from Duke University and Loyola University Chicago that showed how thoroughly the rich have wormed their way into power and how urgently we need to reclaim it.
About half of the US workforce is made up of mechanics, glassmakers, autoworkers, miners, steelworkers, other manufacturing workers and so on. Yet less than 2 percent of state lawmakers across the country hailed from working-class backgrounds as of 2023, the researchers determined.
Just 116 of the 7,300 lawmakers in the study “currently or last worked in manual labor, service industry, clerical or labor union jobs.” In 10 states, the researchers found not a single lawmaker with a real, working person’s job.
It’s the same story with Congress and the Trump administration, both bloated with career politicians, ideologues, tycoons, corporate lawyers and others who neither grasp nor care about the day-to-day struggles of ordinary Americans.
Nothing underscores the chasm between haves and have-nots like US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shrugging off the nation’s rampant inequality. Bessent, a hedge fund founder with a net worth of about $600 million, recently declared that he was “sick of hearing” about the crisis and claimed it no longer existed.
Working people, especially union leaders like Ryan, never hide from a problem or try to wish it away. They face a challenge head-on and get the job done, delivering results because their paychecks, their families, and their very lives in dangerous workplaces depend on it.
Ryan, who’s worked as a crew leader and safety advocate, looks after his coworkers. The same concern for others also fuels his civic involvement, including volunteer work with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, an organization of fellow combat veterans facing the same kinds of challenges that he does.
It’s the kind of mindset—the kind of skillset—ideal for public office.
“You know how to be a leader,” Ryan said of his union activism. “When you work with management, that’s kind of like reaching across the aisle, working with the other side.”
The data backs him up.
Union workers advocate more strongly for working people, both while campaigning and after election to public office, than nonunion peers, according to a study released in March by Jacobin, the Center for Working Class Politics, and Arizona State University’s Center for Work and Democracy.
Union members also use their leadership skills to build bridges in the government arena. They convert their experience in the trenches into credibility in the halls of power. And they win voters’ trust in ways that drive turnout at the polls, the researchers concluded.
As Ryan decided in running for the Indiana legislature, there’s only one way to ensure working people get the government we deserve.
We have to build it with our own hands.
