A black man and a white woman stepped onto a political stage yesterday seeking support for their White House bids from an audience made up almost entirely of white men.
Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) shared neither gender nor race with the overwhelming majority of the crowd of more than 1,000 sweating firefighters whose backing is coveted by presidential aspirants.
At the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) presidential forum, Clinton received raucous applause for her tales of work in New York after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Obama continued to wow crowds with his charisma.
But it was lesser-known candidates, such as Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Joseph Biden (D-Del.) who moved the crowd most by offering what one union boss described as rhetorical “red meat and a six-pack.”
The IAFF, a group that is more than 90 percent male and more than 84 percent white, said Clinton and Obama, for the most part, and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) were impressive as they addressed concerns of firefighters and unions as a whole.
But second- and third-tier candidates like Dodd and Biden demonstrated their lengthy experience in addressing a constituency that generally won’t be found at a civil rights march in Selma, Ala., or an EMILY’s List luncheon in Washington.
Biden, who asked the group to join him for a beer at the Billy Goat Tavern following his speech, spoke to the crowd, somberly at times and challengingly at others, as if he were a union boss. And Dodd received repeated standing ovations while speaking about his work on popular pieces of legislation he has co-authored on behalf of first-responders.
“You can get them to their feet with a speech, but you can’t necessarily get them to change their minds,” said one union official of Edwards, Obama and Clinton. “Dodd and Biden speak these guys’ language.”
As Clinton and Obama seek to land an endorsement from another key bloc of traditional Democratic support, race and sex will not be a factor, IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger told The Hill.
The biggest influence on how candidates finish in the endorsement battle depends on their policies on collective bargaining, which is the top legislative goal of the IAFF and other unions, and a host of other issues more specific to the firefighters’ union. The endorsement battle is likely to end around Labor Day.
Clinton’s work with the New York Fire Department and Obama’s record on collective bargaining agreements during his time in the Illinois state Senate put them in contention for the group’s endorsement, Schaitberger said.
Others were not so sure.
Paul Hebert, a union member from Prince William, Va., said he was impressed by Clinton’s strength and Obama’s charisma, but said it was “some of the candidates I wasn’t as familiar with, like Dodd and Joe” who appealed most to him.
Hebert and the rest of the packed ballroom filled out surveys supplied to them that judged each candidate’s speech on overall opinion, how good a job the candidate would do as president, how likely the member would “consider supporting” the candidate, how likely the local membership would “consider supporting” the candidate and, on a scale of 1 to 10, how “qualified” the candidate is to be president.
All the Democratic candidates fared better in terms of crowd reaction than their Republican counterparts, largely because Iraq came up in every speech. And the Iraq issue is one where the firefighter crowd, split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats, has done a “180,” Schaitberger said.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) appeared to fall flat with the crowd in several places as he led, after a few jokes, with his thoughts on Iraq, telling the crowd that firefighters would “be the first to sacrifice in the case of another attack.”
All the candidates present drew applause as they pledged and asked for support for the troops, decried the recent Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal and remembered the events of Sept. 11.
But Democrats, a party long anchored and buoyed by its support for and from labor unions, scored the bigger reactions as they made campaign promises near and dear to the heart of Big Labor — pledges that would land most Republicans in hot water with their core constituencies.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) was not present, but the most noticeably absent candidate was former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R).
Giuliani’s campaign said a scheduling conflict prevented him from attending, though the decision not to attend came after the IAFF released a draft letter harshly criticizing him for some of his actions following the terrorist attacks, actions the association viewed as disrespectful and callous.
Schaitberger told the press that union leadership would continue to try to educate its membership on what it sees as Giuliani’s failings, but that there would not be any “formal effort” to derail the former mayor’s candidacy.
Others attending included New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and former Gov. Jim Gilmore (R-Va.). |
