Fired up: the only union that stood by Kerry is now sitting pretty.

• Author: Crowley, Michael
• Position: 10 Miles Square

John Kerry bad many a lousy month last year, but September was particularly grim. Howard Dean had just spent the summer pile-driving Kerry's poll numbers into the ground. Wesley Clark was finally joining the race--in part because Kerry had largely been written off. Even Kerry's hometown paper, The Boston Globe, ran a Sept. 16 column titled, "Hard to Pull for Kerry."

But one man pulled for Kerry anyway: Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF). Resisting the Dean allure that captured some of Washington's biggest union leaders, Schaitberger insisted Kerry remained the Democrat with the best chance of beating George W. Bush, and on Sept. 24, announced that his union was endorsing the Massachusetts senator.

Endorsing Kerry turned out to be the easy part. As Dean stampeded farther and farther ahead that fall, other union leaders needled Schaitberger with questions like, "How does it feel to be on the Titanic?" But Schaitberger stood firm. Late one night in November, his home phone rang. It was Kerry. "Harold, listen," the battered candidate wearily began. "There's going to be a very bad Zogby poll coming out tomorrow," Schaitberger cut him off. "John, save your energy. You don't have to worry about me." Firefighters honored a code of brotherhood and loyalty, he said. The IAFF would stick with him no matter what the polls said.

That unwavering support proved critical to Kerry's stunning comeback. Throughout the primaries, Kerry never missed a chance to offset his stiff patrician image with the blue-collar credibility of firefighters. Kerry appeared at dozens of IAFF-organized "firehouse chili feeds" across New Hampshire, in which he ladled out spicy slop and talked politics with locals. In Des Moines, Iowa, he played hockey with local fighters. And on the night of the State of the Union in January this year, he conducted an ABC interview from a Concord fireman's living room. In both states, hundreds of firefighters also helped turn out voters and post signs. Kerry made no secret of his gratitude. During his victory speeches in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Virginia, television viewers saw the same tall, mustachioed man just over Kerry's left shoulder. That was Harold Schaitberger.

Now Schaitberger is the envy of all those other union leaders who wrote off Kerry and leapt onto the "Dean Express." "He's certainly in the catbird seat," says one official of the AFL-CIO, of which IAFF is a...