Meet the Democratic Socialist Winning in a Lockheed Town
Inkstick speaks with Gabriel Sanchez about his recent win in a Democratic statehouse primary – and about his suburban district including Lockheed Martin’s second-largest aircraft plant.
Hi everyone,
National politics making you dizzy? My latest story takes you much further down the political pipeline, to a hyperlocal office that pays $23,341.72 annually and requires showing up to the statehouse in Atlanta 40 days a year.
Courtesy of Gabriel Sanchez’s campaign
It begins when strategists for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a leftist organization whose political platform includes cutting the Pentagon budget to fund climate needs, began scouting around for local races in Georgia where they thought a candidate they backed may have a chance at winning. They settled on a curious one. It was House District 42, a swath of suburbs north of Atlanta that includes portions of Marietta, Smyrna, unincorporated Cobb County, and an 850-acre aircraft plant for America’s largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin.
In May, the candidate the DSA backed, a 27-year-old waiter named Gabriel Sanchez, won the Democratic primary in a local landslide. He ousted a four-term incumbent who took campaign funds from the Arlington-based Lockheed Martin Employees’ Political Action Committee, voted in favor of a 2021 bill that earmarked $100 million in tax breaks to the defense contractor, and lobbied the federal government to grant a lucrative contract to the company. Sanchez beat that incumbent, Teri Anulewicz, 57%-43%. He’ll face a Republican opponent in November, but his May win in the deeply blue district all but guarantees he’ll end up in the Legislature.
Sanchez spoke with me about campaigning as a progressive in company town territory and what voters told him and his volunteers — who knocked on 17,000 doors and chatted with thousands of voters — that they cared about.
“Surprisingly, it [Lockheed] didn’t really come up for people in conversations,” Sanchez said. He met employees who worked at the plant and said he didn’t get “any pushback about my candidacy” on the issue. Sanchez said the number-one concern he heard in his district was housing costs in suburbs where homeownership was once affordable but is now increasingly out of reach for working families.
Locals did speak often about Israel’s war on Gaza, telling him they were abstaining from voting because they were “disgusted” with the current administration’s actions, he said. Even though he was running as a Democrat, Sanchez said he and his volunteers “managed to convince some of them to vote for our campaign because we [the DSA] do support a ceasefire.”
Read more here about how how state lawmakers impact Lockheed’s bottom line and labor policies — and how Sanchez plans to engage the military contractor when he (very likely) will represent its second-largest aircraft plant.
This is a public school near the Lockheed plant in Sanchez’s district. By Taylor Barnes
Extra
This deep-dive from journalist William Swett in York, Nebraska, includes interviews with recent Raytheon/Collins Aerospace retirees about the aircraft they made parts for being used by Israel to bomb Gaza. One quote from a retiree jumped out at me: “[I] never liked the idea of us manufacturing for other people's wars … We're all living the dream here in America, which we as workers deserve. But now in order to better ourselves and make more money, we're gonna make more stuff to kill other people in other countries, because we don't know who they are." I’ve heard a similar sentiment in the field — that workers feel more comfortable producing weapons for the US military than foreign ones.
Building Palestine Solidarity in an Arms Factory
This is a remarkable first-person story, originally published by Labor Notes, about dissent and internal organizing by labor leaders at a UK plant that makes parts for the F-35, which Israel uses to bomb Gaza.
A Cool Award in Utah!
Our friends at KRCL radio in Salt Lake City won first place in the Society of Professional Journalists’ local awards for coverage of the military-industrial complex and downwinders. The award is for an episode I was on to discuss our reporting on Northrop Grumman and union-busting at defense contractors — you can listen here. I’ll be in Utah in August again — send any tips and questions you’d like answered my way.
Thank you for reading!
Thoughts, comments, story suggestions? Send them my way at tbarnes@inkstickmedia.com. We may publish them in a future newsletter.