He Voted Against Letting the Teamsters Bill Reach the Floor. Ninety Minutes Later, He Voted For It.

Labor / Campaign Finance Source: Facebook Post (campaign page) MISSING CONTEXT

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Why this matters

On August 27 the New York Teamsters endorsed Rep. Langworthy, one of five Republicans on a twenty-candidate slate. He posted that it was “about action, not just words,” and that the union had “recognized my record of results.”

The vote behind that endorsement is real, and it deserves to be said plainly before anything else: he broke with his own conference to cast it. Only 20 of the 212 Republicans voting supported the bill. That is not a free vote.

What the post leaves out is that he cast two votes on that bill the same day. Ninety-five minutes before voting for it, he voted against the rule that allowed it to be considered, which passed only because eleven other Republicans crossed over. The Teamsters also described the endorsement as resting on that single bill, in as many words, and his other recorded labor votes went the other way.

The claim

Source: Post on the campaign page “Nick Langworthy,” August 27, 2026, sharing WETM’s story on the endorsement.

“So proud to earn the endorsement of the Teamsters in my re-election. These are the hardworking men and women who make our country run and that’s who I fight for every day in Washington. Good paying careers, strengthening the middle class, and standing up for workers will always be my top priorities but it’s about action, not just words, and I’m honored that they have recognized my record of results.”

He made the same claim in an official news release the same day, provided to WETM:

“I have always believed in the power of a good-paying career and a strong middle class, but we need leaders who do more than talk, but actually get results, and I’m so proud to have the Teamsters’ endorsement in my reelection.”

The action, and it is a real one

H.R. 5408, the Faster Labor Contracts Act. The bill amends the National Labor Relations Act to require employers to begin bargaining shortly after a union wins recognition, with mediation and then binding arbitration if no first contract is reached. It is the Teamsters’ marquee legislative priority.

On June 9, 2026 the House passed it 230 to 193 (Roll Call 216, taken at 7:05 p.m.). Langworthy voted Yea, one of only 20 Republicans out of 212 voting.

Roll Call 216, the billYeaNay
Republicans20192
Democrats2100

That vote is real, it is the thing he was endorsed for, and he cast it against the overwhelming weight of his own conference.

It was also the second of two votes he cast on this bill that day, and the first one went the other way.

The vote that decided whether the bill could pass

H.R. 5408 sat in the Education and Workforce Committee from September 2025 without action. To force it out, Rep. Norcross filed discharge petition 119-19 on April 20, 2026, aimed at H. Res. 1140, the special rule providing for the bill’s consideration. That rule was itself sitting in the Rules Committee, on which Langworthy serves. The petition reached the required signatures and the resolution moved to the Discharge Calendar on May 20.

On June 9 the House had to agree to that discharged rule before it could touch the bill. Roll Call 215, taken at 5:30 p.m.: agreed to, 221 to 201. Langworthy voted Nay.

Roll Call 215, the ruleYeaNay
Republicans11200
Democrats2100

The rule passed only because eleven Republicans crossed over: Bacon, Bresnahan, Fitzpatrick, Joyce (OH), LaLota, Lawler, Miller (OH), Moore (WV), Smith (NJ), Van Drew and Van Orden. Langworthy was not among them.

In plain language: the rule vote is the one that determined whether the Teamsters’ bill could be considered at all. Had it failed, there would have been no bill to vote on. Langworthy voted against it at 5:30 p.m., then voted for the bill at 7:05 p.m., after other members had supplied the votes that made passage possible.

The fair reading, stated plainly. Voting against a rule and then for the underlying bill is common, and there is a principled version of it: many members oppose discharge petitions on institutional grounds, because they bypass the committee process, whatever the bill says. Langworthy has not publicly explained this vote, so that reading remains available to him and this entry does not rule it out. He is also not alone among the endorsed group.

How the five endorsed Republicans voted on each:

MemberRule (RC 215)Bill (RC 216)
Nick LaLota (NY-1)YeaYea
Mike Lawler (NY-17)YeaYea
Andrew Garbarino (NY-2)NayYea
Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11)NayYea
Nick Langworthy (NY-23)NayYea

Three of the five did what Langworthy did. Two, LaLota and Lawler, voted both to let the bill be considered and to pass it.

One correction to the record now circulating: he is a cosponsor of H.R. 5408, but he is not an original cosponsor. The govinfo BILLSTATUS record lists his sponsorship date as January 20, 2026, with isOriginalCosponsor recorded as false. September 16, 2025 is the date Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ-1) introduced the bill, not the date Langworthy signed on. He joined roughly four months after introduction, as one of 110 cosponsors.

What the endorsement was actually for

The Teamsters were explicit. Teamsters Joint Council 16 President Thomas Gesualdi framed the entire slate around that one bill, and named it as the sole test:

“It’s an honor to support this bipartisan group of incumbents, because the Faster Labor Contracts Act is a game-changer, and it will empower workers more than any federal law that’s been passed since the New Deal. Support for this bill is a litmus test for whether a member of Congress actually supports the American worker, and every one of our endorsed candidates passed that test with flying colors.”

Twenty candidates were endorsed across New York, fifteen Democrats and five Republicans: Nick LaLota (NY-1), Andrew Garbarino (NY-2), Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11), Mike Lawler (NY-17), and Langworthy. The slate is headed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

A note on a figure in circulation: WETM’s report describes Langworthy as “one of only 4 Republicans” endorsed. The endorsement list published in the same article contains five Republicans, counted above. This entry uses the list.

In plain language: the union named the criterion itself, and the criterion was a single roll-call vote. “Record of results” describes a body of work. The endorsers described a test with one question on it.

The rest of the labor record

DateMeasureLangworthySource
June 9, 2026H.R. 5408, Faster Labor Contracts Act (passed 230-193)YeaRoll Call 216
Dec 11, 2025H.R. 2550, Protect America’s Workforce Act, restoring collective bargaining for federal workersNayRoll Call 332
Jan 12, 2024H.J. Res. 98, disapproval of the NLRB joint-employer ruleNot VotingRoll Call 010

A second correction. Research circulating on this topic records the January 2024 joint-employer measure as an anti-labor floor vote by Langworthy. The House Clerk’s roll call shows him as Not Voting. He did not vote on it. His Rules Committee action on that resolution is a separate matter and is not a floor vote; this entry does not characterize it as one.

On the discharge petition, a note on our own checking. The action list for H.R. 5408 records only that the bill was “considered under the provisions of rule H. Res. 1140,” which reads like the ordinary path and shows no discharge entry. The discharge was filed against the rule, not the bill: petition 119-19 appears on H. Res. 1140’s own action list. Anyone checking only the bill’s record will miss it, as we did on a first pass.

What he has done for drivers

The Teamsters are, among other things, a drivers’ union. To test the “record of results” claim against legislation rather than a single vote, we pulled every measure Langworthy has sponsored or cosponsored in the 119th Congress from the govinfo BILLSTATUS bulk data, the authoritative record: 47 sponsored and 311 cosponsored, 358 in all.

None of them is a trucking or commercial-driver bill.

Thirteen fall under the Transportation and Public Works policy area. Every one is aviation, maritime, transit or general infrastructure:

MeasureRole
Safer Skies Act (H.R. 2353)Sponsor
Infrastructure Expansion Act (H.R. 3548)Sponsor
Pay TSA Act (H.R. 7941)Sponsor
Bus Operator Safety and Security Act (H.R. 6635)Cosponsor
SHIPS for America Act (H.R. 2429)Cosponsor
American Shipyard Investment Act (H.R. 3151)Cosponsor
Aviation Funding Stability Act (H.R. 5455)Cosponsor
Red Light Act (H.R. 203), ROTOR Act, No Flight No Fight Act, Safe Flights for Passengers and Flight Crews Act, DEFENSE Act, and one commendation resolutionCosponsor

A search of the subject terms attached to all 358 measures for truck, motor carrier, commercial driver, hours of service, freight, drayage and highway safety returns zero matches.

The closest thing to a driver bill in the list, and it is worth crediting, is H.R. 6635, the Bus Operator Safety and Security Act, which he cosponsored. It sets requirements for operator workstations on fixed-route buses, a protection for transit drivers. Transit operators are represented by other unions; it is not freight.

In plain language: on the specific policy areas that govern the working lives of the freight and package drivers the Teamsters represent, hours of service, driver licensing, truck parking, speed limiters, owner-operator classification, he has not sponsored or cosponsored anything in this Congress. He is not on Transportation and Infrastructure, the committee where most of that legislation moves, which is part of the explanation.

The money

Contributions below are from FEC bulk files for the 2022, 2024 and 2026 cycles, counting only committee-to-candidate contributions to Langworthy for Congress, excluding memo entries and refunds.

The Teamsters have given him nothing. Across all three cycles, no Teamsters committee, including the union’s national PAC, D.R.I.V.E., appears among his contributors. The total is $0. That figure was confirmed against a control: nineteen Teamsters-affiliated committees appear in the FEC committee master file, they gave to 104 recipients in the 2026 cycle alone, and none of those contributions went to Langworthy.

This cuts in his favor on the obvious question. The endorsement did not follow money from the endorser.

Labor money generally has grown, but from other unions.

CycleLabor PAC total
2022$22,500
2024$85,500
2026$93,500
Total$201,500

The donors are concentrated in aviation and the postal service: the Air Line Pilots Association, Allied Pilots, Southwest Airlines Pilots, NetJets pilots, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the letter carriers and postal workers unions, the Operating Engineers, and the Carpenters, who also endorsed him this month. Notably, the Independent Pilots Association, which represents UPS pilots, gave $2,500 in February 2026.

On the employer side of the same industries: United Parcel Service’s PAC gave $8,000 across the three cycles, the American Trucking Associations' Trucking PAC $3,000, and FedEx’s PAC $2,000.

The opponent’s response

WETM asked both candidates for comment. Aaron Gies, Langworthy’s Democratic opponent, disputed the premise and cited competing labor support:

“I am proud to have won the endorsement of the NY AFL-CIO, the UAW, NYSUT and other labor groups.”

He also argued that Langworthy’s votes and his tariff and DOGE Caucus positions have hurt union members. Those are campaign assertions from an opponent, and this entry does not adopt or verify them; they are recorded because the same article carries both statements. The two are scheduled to debate live on WETM at 7:00 p.m. on October 6, 2026.

What this entry does not establish

  • The vote was not bought, and nothing here suggests it was. The union that endorsed him has given him no money at all.
  • His labor record is not uniformly hostile. Labor PACs have given him $201,500 over three cycles and the figure has risen each cycle, which is not the profile of a member unions consider unreachable.
  • He does not sit on the labor committees. He is on Energy and Commerce, Oversight, and Rules, not Education and Workforce or Transportation and Infrastructure, which limits the number of labor votes and hearings he is positioned to act on.
  • Three votes is a thin sample. This entry documents the recorded floor votes it could verify, not a complete labor scorecard. Annual union scorecard ratings are cited secondhand elsewhere and are deliberately not used here.

Questions this raises

  1. The Teamsters said the endorsement rested on one vote. Does the Congressman consider the Faster Labor Contracts Act a template, and will he support the Senate version without weakening amendments?
  2. He voted Nay on restoring collective bargaining for federal workers in December 2025 and Yea for private-sector first-contract arbitration six months later. What distinguishes the two for him?
  3. He voted against H. Res. 1140, the rule that allowed H.R. 5408 to be considered, and the rule his own Rules Committee had not reported. What was his objection, and does he consider the bill’s passage a result he helped produce?
  4. Across 358 measures in this Congress he has sponsored or cosponsored no trucking or commercial-driver legislation. Does he intend to, and does his office have a position on hours of service, truck parking, or driver classification?
  5. Thousands of Teamsters freight, package and pension constituents live in and near NY-23. Has his office taken any action on the 2023 Yellow Corporation closure or on the New York State Teamsters Conference Pension Fund?

Sources

Roll calls (House Clerk XML)

Bill record

Legislative record

Campaign finance (FEC bulk files, retrieved August 28, 2026)

The endorsement

Note: This entry documents publicly available information. The Congressman’s office was not asked for comment before publication; the questions above stand open, and any response will be published here in full. Contribution figures are computed from FEC bulk data and exclude memo entries and refunds.

Last updated: August 28, 2026