CORAOPOLIS, Pennsylvania — Dressed in a suit and tie, Edward J. Bigley, the business manager of Plumbers Union Local 27, took to the podium just before Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA) was set to speak and outlined who his union members were and why they were supporting the Scranton Democrat.

“We have eleven hundred members that represent 15 counties, and we are one of the 17 unions that make up the Pittsburgh building trades,” Bigley said at the event at the plumber’s local building in suburban Pittsburgh.

“We have survived a long time here, as all you guys in the building trades have, in a very competitive and sometimes unfair environment. So when you get someone like Sen. Casey having your back or in your corner, it means a lot, and he deserves our support,” he said.

“Very simply, building trades support candidates who support us,” said Bigley, standing in front of a striking mural celebrating both the skills and grit plumbers bring to building and construction.

Casey told me after the event that it was a great honor to earn the endorsement of the Pittsburgh Regional Building Trades Council, “especially since they often support Republicans’ candidates for Congress, U.S. Senate, and even governor.”

He is not wrong. Gallup surveys done between 1999 and 2013 showed only modest differences in party affiliation. But since then, those differences have deeply widened, with U.S. adults with a postgraduate education swinging decidedly left (to +29 Democratic) while working-class voters without a college education but who are often skilled laborers flipped from being +14 Democratic in 1999 to +14 Republican in 2023.

Casey said he attributes part of earning their endorsement to his longevity with them.

“I think it’s a combination of the building trades in Pittsburgh, knowing me for a good while, but also knowing a good bit about my record,” he said, adding, “Part of it is knowing them and, in a sense, having grown up with them in a way, at least politically, since I’ve been a candidate and a public official.”

Casey has run and won state office as a Democrat since he first ran in 1996. He was elected state auditor twice, then elected state treasurer, and then had three consecutive successful statewide wins for senator in 2006, 2012, and 2018.

Casey is facing Republican Dave McCormick for another term in the Senate.  

A recent CNN survey of the Casey-McCormick race conducted by SSRS in Pennsylvania of 1,132 randomly sampled registered voters showed that 33% of the voters viewed Casey favorably, 25% of them viewed him unfavorably, and 42% held no opinion of him at all. McCormick was seen by voters as a mostly unknown figure, with 13% viewing him favorably, 17% unfavorable, and 70% holding no opinion.

The race is projected to be one of the most expensive races in the country this year and one of the most competitive, with both men vying for the skilled working-class voters.

The Pittsburgh Regional Building Trades Council is a labor organization that represents 33 different Western Pennsylvania local unions in 19 different craft sectors across several counties in that part of the state.

Casey said another part of why he earned their support is his “all of the above” approach to energy that he says some Democrats don’t agree with, “but I do, and they noticed our work on that.”

The Scranton Democrat, whose family hails from the same street as President Joe Biden’s childhood home, said he has had to take issue with the president over several things in the energy sector, beginning with the Biden administration’s proposed rules for a clean energy tax cut that could affect Pennsylvania businesses’ ability to participate in the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub and the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub.

Casey stressed he had serious concerns about the impact of the rule on workers in the state. Its liberal supporters claim the new clean hydrogen economy would create tens of thousands of new jobs here alone.

“I’ve been a part of a group of Democrats who are trying to hold the administration accountable to make sure they implement it in accordance with the statutory language, to make sure we can take advantage of this hydrogen opportunity,” he said.

“It couldn’t be more important for the state to be able to take full advantage of that, where you’re putting down the foundation of a clean energy economy but you’re doing it in a way that will ensure that we have those building trades jobs in the future that the highest-skilled workforce in the world can take advantage of,” the senator said.

Casey has also joined freshman Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) in taking issue with Biden’s pause of exports of liquefied natural gas, which will affect thousands of Pennsylvania jobs, communities, and school district tax bases.

Pennsylvania is the second-largest natural gas-producing state after Texas, contributing more than $41 billion to the state’s economic activity and employing directly over 125,000 people, many of them members of the trades such as plumbers, electricians, and welders as well as geologists, engineers, computer technicians, and chemists.

Casey said nothing is more stark than when passing through two side-by-side counties, where one has seen the benefits of natural gas extraction and the one beside it has not.

“Sometimes you can see two counties that are geographically contiguous where one county has gas extraction and the other doesn’t. Guess which one has the higher job number because of the opportunity that natural gas creates,” he said.

On a different note, Casey said if there was one thing that isn’t talked about enough, it’s the benefits from what Congress and Biden did in passing the so-called American Rescue Plan.

The landmark $2 trillion plan was intended to lift our economy from the effects of the pandemic, but the negative consequences were almost instantaneous, with the biggest jump in consumer prices in 40 years.

Casey said the other part of the debate on who is to blame for inflation belongs to big corporations.

“I’ve released these four reports, two on greedflation, one on shrinkflation, and one on junk fees,” he said. “And the combination of all that has had a real impact on people’s perspectives because when they go to the grocery store, the prices are going through the roof.”

For him, the benefits of the American Rescue Plan are in the small counties and townships not having to lay off their workforces, the child tax credit, and pension support.

“But one that really jumped out at me in the last couple of months that I had not thought about or really zeroed in on was K-12 education to help, for example, in some of these counties where the total population of the county is around 40,000,” the senator said.

“These are counties where they were getting $15 million on top of the state education, state basic education subsidies,” he said. “This was federal money because of COVID and because of the predicament they were facing that they never had before. And I just think it’s an undercovered part of the American Rescue Plan.”

At the union endorsement event, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), who is from Montgomery County, said Casey was facing the battle of his career and that it was not a stretch to say whoever wins both the presidential contest and the Senate race here will determine who the next president will be as well as who will determine which party holds the majority in the Senate.