As New York celebrates Labor Day on Monday, Governor Pataki will be throwing a few more hamburgers on the grill than he has in years past. That’s because he has been busy making friends with the Empire State’s various branches of organized labor. In late May, Mr. Pataki picked up the endorsement of the Teamsters Union. Previous to that, he picked up the endorsement of Dennis Rivera’s health care workers Local 1199. And the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations, which is declining to endorse during the Democratic primary, is hinting at coming by later for snow cones. Mostly, Mr. Pataki earned his union endorsements the old fashioned way — by buying them. In January, he signed over $1.8 billion to finance raises and pay for recruitment of unionized health workers, and he has also signed onto a number of expensive benefits for state workers.

However, as the Democratic Party takes union votes for granted, Republicans may no longer have to adhere to the Pataki playbook to garner labor support. At least President Bush has taken a different tack in wooing Big Labor, and he has enjoyed a modicum of success. Reporter Donald Lambro of the Washington Times has been writing a series of articles documenting the Bush administration’s efforts and the fracturing of the traditional relationship between the Democratic Party and labor, which could have profound political implications over the next decade. Most strikingly, he has reported that Federal Election Commission reports show union giving to Republicans has reached 20% of total giving in the last year, up from 6%.

According to Mr. Lambro, this shift has been led by the president of the Teamsters, James Hoffa, who has swayed important players such as the building trades and the Service Employees International Union to rethink the all-Democrats-all-the-time mindset. Unions are not created “to become ATM machines for the Democratic National Committee” Mr. Lambro quotes Mr. Hoffa as telling anyone who will listen. At the same time as Mr. Hoffa proselytizes, Mr. Bush gives the Teamsters input on labor appointments and has invited sympathetic union bosses to the White House in droves. The outreach strategy has trickled down to where state and local unions around the country are endorsing Republicans such as Mr. Pataki, Massachusetts’s Governor Swift, and Nevada’s Governor Guinn. The Teamsters, Mr. Lambro reports, are even likely to endorse the president’s brother, Florida’s Governor Bush.

The holdout in all of this has been the AFL-CIO, which, as the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page pointed out last year at this time, functions basically as a subsidiary of the DNC. But according to Mr. Lambro, there is even recognition at the AFL-CIO that labor cannot afford to remain in the Democrats’ pockets. Especially they cannot afford to as the party moves leftward, spooked by the Green Party havoc wreaked in 2000. The issue of opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to limited oil exploration highlighted perfectly the split opening between labor and the left. Democrats mostly saw caribou-conscious votes to lose. The Teamsters saw jobs to gain. With these choices being made by the Democrats, there is every reason to hope that the Reagan majority that undergirds the American resurgence can be brought to the surface again. It’s something to ponder as we mark the holiday here at New York City, the first ever to celebrate Labor Day.