Convention Insider: This Union Leader Is a Hug Machine

Lee Saunders is a hugger.

The president of the 1.6-million-strong American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Mr. Saunders was in his element on Wednesday, even if he happened to be inside a sterile, overly large, overly air-conditioned hotel ballroom in Chicago’s South Loop.

Before the public-sector union’s faithful, on the outskirts of the Democratic National Convention, Mr. Saunders greeted Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s young mayor and a former teachers’ union activist, as “a good friend, one of us” and sent him off with a hug.

Next came Representative Mark Pocan, a progressive from Wisconsin, where Republican leaders have decimated public-sector unions. “We’re going to get our union back in Wisconsin,” Mr. Saunders promised, before giving Mr. Pocan a hug.

Finally came Marcia Fudge, the former mayor of a suburb of Mr. Saunders’s hometown, Cleveland, a former congresswoman from the city and a former secretary of housing and urban development. Mr. Saunders hailed her as a “sister” in the labor movement whom he had known practically his whole life. She got a very big hug.

Union presidents have been treated well by the Democrats at a convention celebrating the party’s new ticket.