Josh Hawley’s $15 minimum wage, pro-union bids: What party is he in? | Opinion

If Josh Hawley leads, who will follow?

I’ve been wondering this lately, as Missouri’s senior senator increasingly stakes out pro-worker positions that set him apart from the broader Republican Party. His latest move: A bill that would raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour from the current $7.25.

Which sounds great, honestly, though it has to be pointed out that more than a few Democrats were on board with the “Fight for $15” — more than a decade ago.

Welcome to the bandwagon, Senator. Better late than never!

“If we’re going to be a working people’s party, we have to do something for working people,” Hawley told NBC News. “And working people haven’t gotten a raise in years. So they need a raise.”

It’s just the latest in a recent series of high-profile Hawley actions seemingly designed to buff up his working class bona fides. He has warned his party against making Medicaid cuts, unveiled a framework to make it easier for workers to unionize and argued that President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” should be oriented more toward giving tax cuts to workers than to billionaires.

Hawley, NBC’s Sahil Kapur quipped this week, “is trying to stake out the rarest of ground in national politics: socially conservative, fiscally liberal.”

There is a temptation — thanks to Hawley’s culture-warring, fist-bumping, anti-abortion, Democrat-bashing persona — to write all of this off as little more than an act, about as authentic as the denim shirt and cowboy boots that the senator sometimes wears when he comes home to Missouri, a way to grab the spotlight ahead of a potential run for president.

But let’s give Hawley the benefit of the doubt, at least for the sake of argument: Let’s say he really is trying to transform the GOP into a true worker’s party.

Who is joining his crusade?

Wall Street Journal, National Review criticism

Certainly not Hawley’s fellow Show-Me State conservatives in Jefferson City, who spent this spring working to claw back the paid sick leave requirement that Missouri voters approved just a few months ago.

Not still-influential conservative outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, which bashed Hawley last month for his “Medicaid switcheroo,” nor National Review, which responded to his minimum wage proposal this week by complaining that Hawley is making a habit of “advocating for policies once exclusively championed by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.”

And not the most important Republican of all, Donald Trump, who has spent his presidency thus far dismantling worker protections and firing pro-union federal officials. Raising minimum wage? It’s not even on this administration’s radar.

It sure looks like there is a lot of room on Hawley’s bandwagon.

Which raises a question: Is Josh Hawley the Susan Collins of the right?

Collins, the Maine senator, is about the closest thing to a moderate in today’s GOP. From time to time, she shows some independence — from Trump, and from the broader party line — and for that she often gets the kind of headlines that Hawley has been getting lately.

Those headlines, though, haven’t bought her much in the way of influence in the party. She is, at the end of the day, an outlier who usually (but not always) goes along with Republicans on big votes and ends up disappointing hardcore partisans across the political spectrum.

That can’t be what Hawley wants, can it?

Maybe a better comparison is Bernie Sanders, the lefty Vermont senator who is so independent that he isn’t actually a Democrat, but who has nonetheless succeeded — via a pair of failed but influential presidential campaigns — in dragging Democrats somewhat to the left over the last decade.

That doesn’t sound like Hawley, who has always given the impression of being a man in a hurry: Remember he ran for Missouri attorney general promising not to be another ladder-climber, only to win and immediately pivot to a run for the U.S. Senate.

But a real transformation of the pro-business Republican Party to a worker’s party — one that offers more than lip service to the idea — will require a Sanders-esque grind and commitment. It will take a lot of time.

For now, though, Josh Hawley’s pro-worker GOP looks like a party of one.

This story was originally published June 15, 2025 at 5:03 AM.