Draft:Lainey Newman

Lainey Newman is an American writer and law student. She is best known for writing Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party along with sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol, which was named one of the best books of 2023 by The New Republic.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Newman attended the Barack Obama Academy of International Studies. In high school, she volunteered for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and served as Pennsylvania youth governor in the YMCA Youth and Government program.

Rust Belt Union Blues is the result of Newman's senior thesis at Harvard College, which she conducted under Skocpol's mentorship. For her thesis, Newman traveled around the part of western Pennsylvania where she grew up and elsewhere in the industrial midwest conducting ethnographic research. Her research included interviewing current and retired union members, counting bumper stickers and political signs , and reviewing archival union newsletters. The book analyzes the decline in loyalty to the Democratic Party among union members.

As of 2023, Newman was a J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School.