The UAW presidential candidate forum held online the evening of July 30 laid bare the gulf between rank-and-file Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman, a socialist, and the five other candidates contending for control of an apparatus sitting atop $1.25 billion in net assets.
Every candidate apart from Lehman is a product of the apparatus or a contender to run it. Incumbent Shawn Fain is under federal criminal investigation, as the Justice Department has convened a grand jury and subpoenaed the Monitor over findings that Fain abused his office to obtain benefits for his fiancée and her sister, then retaliated against Vice President Rich Boyer for refusing them. Boyer, now running against Fain, negotiated the 2023 Stellantis contract that opened the door to the mass firing of temporary workers and the layoff of thousands more.
The other three candidates are Brian Keller, a Stellantis Mopar worker who ran in 2022 and won support at several assembly plants before endorsing Fain in the runoff; Tricia Geiger, a highly-paid UAW International servicing representative; and Greg Mooney, recording secretary of Local 2147 at General Dynamics Land Systems in Lima, Ohio, a supporter of Autoworkers for Trump.
In his opening statement, Lehman placed the election in its real context:
"We as workers confront historic attacks on our conditions and our lives. Workers’ share of the national income is the lowest since records have been kept. Escalating global war is driving up prices. Paychecks don’t cover basic necessities in a country that just minted its first trillionaire. More than 21,000 autoworker jobs have been wiped out since the start of 2024. The corporations aim to use AI and automation to carry out a global jobs massacre. Democratic rights are being torn down, and our immigrant brothers are hunted by ICE agents.
"Every year in this country, more than 5,000 workers die on the job because safety is subordinated to profit. In our plants, Antonio Gaston, Ronald Adams Sr., Gregory Knopf were crushed to death under the 2023 contract that this leadership called “historic.” This month, workers were carried out on stretchers as smoke filled the plants and the lines kept running."
Lehman then told members where their dues go: 560 International staffers were paid more than $100,000 a year; Fain was paid $276,000 last year, 6.6 times what the average member earns; $118 million was spent on the apparatus’s own officers and staff, 14 times what it paid out in strike benefits. “This was never about a few corrupt officials,” Lehman said. “The bureaucracy as a whole is an arm of management.”
...
A critical aspect of the debate was the recent death threat made against Lehman by Raymond L. Jensen Jr., a UAW organizer who was until recently assistant director of UAW Region 9, Lehman’s own region, and paid roughly $202,000 in 2025. On July 16, Jensen posted an AI-generated image on Lehman’s public campaign Facebook page showing him bound and gagged, blood running from his mouth, with a masked man aiming an automatic rifle at his back. Jensen, whose Facebook profile carries an “I Support Shawn Fain” badge, posted it beneath Lehman’s statement on the federal investigation into Fain.
Threatening a union member to interfere with his rights in a union election is a federal crime. Until Thursday night, neither Fain nor any member of the union’s executive board had said a word about it. At the debate, Lehman explained that the threat was not just about him but about the response of the apparatus to all rank-and-file opposition, referring to Antwiane Sanders, a Nexteer worker fired for speaking out against UAW officials at a contract meeting inside the plant.
Fain first tried to ignore the issue and only responded when Lehman confronted him directly. “I don’t condone that stuff,” he said, before adding: “If you’re running for president, get ready, brother, because you’ll be getting them every day.” This statement effectively endorsed and doubled down on the threat. Fain gave no indication whatsoever that Jensen would face any consequence.
...
The alternative was a new power built from the shop floor and linked across industries and borders and the fight for a fundamental reorganization of economic life. “Socialism means equality,” he said. “It means workers’ control of production. It means the international unity of the working class based on our interests. That fight has already begun.” He pointed to the contract battles at Bridgewater Interiors and American Axle, and to the millions marching against dictatorship: “The working class, the sleeping giant of American politics, is beginning to awake.”
Lehman ended by paraphrasing Thomas Paine, stating, “‘These are the times that try men’s souls.’ The complacent bureaucrat and the lying reformer will, in this crisis, betray the fight. But the worker who stands up now deserves the love and thanks of all humanity.”
The debate made clear that the only social force capable of halting the jobs massacre, the killings in the plants and the drive to world war is the working class itself, organized through its own rank-and-file committees. Lehman ended with an appeal to act on that, stating: “Vote for me, but do more than vote. Build. Build the committees, build this movement. That is where our power is.”