Labor Nominee’s Brushes With Scandal Loom Before Confirmation

Marty Walsh is no stranger to adversity—surviving cancer, a gunshot wound, and alcohol addiction on an unlikely odyssey from the streets of Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood to the top job at City Hall.

Now, as President Joe Biden’s nominee for labor secretary, Walsh faces a Senate confirmation battle that will put the 53-year-old mayor’s working-class appeal and deep roots with organized labor in the spotlight—both the years he spent advocating for Boston construction workers and a union-related extortion scandal that shadowed him as mayor.

Walsh’s ties to unions while holding public office, federal extortion charges against a pair of his aides, ...