An ascendant pro-labor wing of the Republican Party had its moment in the spotlight Monday as International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien addressed the Republican National Convention.

The speech came just hours after former President Donald Trump announced that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) would join him on the Republican presidential ticket. Vance has been one of a handful of Republican lawmakers who has consistently supported organized labor and taken a critical approach to corporate power.

“Anti-union groups demanded the president rescind his invitation,” O’Brien said in his speech. “The Left called me a traitor. This is precisely why it’s so important for me to be here today. Think about this. I must be doing something correct if the extremes in both parties think I shouldn’t be on this stage.”

O’Brien, the first leader of the Teamsters union to address a Republican convention, also noted that he has worked with several Republican lawmakers on legislation, including Vance, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY).

“The Teamsters and the GOP may not agree on a lot of issues, but a growing group has shown the courage to sit down and consider points of view that aren’t funded by big money think tanks,” O’Brien said.

The outreach to organizations like the Teamsters by a handful of members is evidence that the changes in the Republican Party’s coalition are driving real changes in policy. No longer is the party dominated by the highly educated white-collar class. Instead, it is a party that relies primarily on working-class blue-collar voters who were once the backbone of the Democratic Party’s coalition.

Such an alliance requires the party to rethink its old views on trade, big business, and even its old hostility to organized labor.

In an op-ed for Compact, Hawley noted that the Republican base is increasingly made up of union members and the party must listen to its voters rather than corporate benefactors.

“​Republican elites may have sold out to Big Business in years past, but their voters never did,” Hawley wrote. “From Missouri to Ohio to Florida, states where Republicans compete and win are home to millions of working people who back the GOP. Many belong to unions or have friends and family who do. They get it: Unions are a vital piece of the fabric of a nation that depends on working people.”

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If the GOP is going to be the party of the working class for the next generation and beyond, it must find room in its coalition for O’Brien, the Teamsters, and other labor unions whose members make up large swaths of the Republican electoral coalition.

The Trump-Vance ticket is showing the rest of the party a path forward toward permanently realigning the Republican Party alongside the interests of Youngstown, Ohio, rather than the interests of Orange County, California.