A Fighting Chance

“Yeah, we’re endorsing you.”


Eddie said the firefighters had talked and talked and talked about it, and from his description, I gathered that some of the conversations had been heated. He explained that one of the leaders in the union had worked on Scott Brown’s campaign and another was a longtime friend. But in the end, the council had voted—unanimously—to recommend that the membership endorse me.

Finally, Eddie leaned back and smiled. Since we’re in, he said, we’re going to be in all the way. “You’ll be family.”

Eddie was good to his word and then some. The firefighters got a huge neon-yellow bus and put a giant picture of me on the side. They drove the bus all around the state, blasting its very noisy horn and often parking it near Scott Brown rallies.

During that long year of campaigning, I met lots of firefighters, but I also met hundreds of members of other unions. I met truck drivers, electricians, and sheet metal workers. Teachers and nurses, carpenters and musicians, janitors and bricklayers. Postal workers, home health care aides, steelworkers. I talked with them at construction sites and training centers, at job registries and volunteer events. They did many different kinds of work, and they had a wide range of worries, but those unions stood tall for all workers.

Most of the union members I met with were painfully aware that unions across the country were losing ground, as fewer workplaces were unionized. But unions were also losing ground politically. More than one president of a local union told me that other politicians would come to them for money and endorsements. But when they left the union hall, those same politicians spoke only in code, never saying the word union in their speeches. I think it mattered that in speeches and rallies and roundtable discussions, I said the word, long and loud: “Union!”

The way I saw it, unions had helped build America’s middle class. They fought for better wages and reasonable hours. They fought for safer factories. They fought for pensions and retirement security. They fought for health care coverage. And every one of those benefits spread to other workers—union and non-union—which made the whole middle class stronger and more secure. And when the squeeze was on, unions showed up to fight for Social Security, for Medicare, for a higher minimum wage, for equal pay for women, and, to my great delight, for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They fought for the values that keep us strong.

Often enough during the campaign, I would hear the phrase corporate and labor influence in politics, as if “corporate” and “labor” were somehow two sides of the same coin. Really? Does anyone believe that an army of lobbyists fighting for tax loopholes and special breaks for one corporation is the same as the unions fighting for Social Security and equal pay? Does anyone believe that when corporations give money to take down unions and support so-called right-to-work laws, there are unions giving equal money to try to put companies out of business (and themselves out of a job)? Does anyone think that for every billionaire executive who can afford to write a check for $10 million to get his candidate elected to office, there is a union guy who can do the same? Give me a break.

In the battle over who Washington was really working for, the unions knew which side they were fighting on, and they fought as hard as they could. I was honored to have the chance to fight alongside them.





Debates

Scott Brown and I would debate each other three times during the campaign, and the first debate was scheduled for September 20. Polls showed that the race was now pretty close, and a lot of people found ways to tell me how important it was that I do a good job. I started getting nervous—really, really nervous.

Dan was full of Dan-style encouragement. He kept saying, “You could lose the whole race in a single bad minute during the debate.”

The prep sessions were a nightmare. Nearly a dozen staffers gathered around to help me prepare. One of them would ask a question: “What is the path to peace in the Middle East?” Or, “How should we create more jobs in the economy?” I would start into my answer, and somewhere in the middle of point one in my four-point plan, someone would yell, “Time!”

I was supposed to answer every question in a minute and a half. Ninety seconds. One of the staff would ask another question, and again, before I could get to the main idea, someone would shout, “Time!”