It went popular at the right time for a campaign: A group of boos greeted JD Vance as he spoke to a room full of union firemen in Boston. This was the same group that had cheered for Tim Walz the day before.
But Walz and Kamala Harris only had that one time. Even though they were well received at their meeting in August, the International Association of Fire Fighters did not officially support either candidate for president last week.
This was a blow to the Walz-Harris campaign and shows a much bigger problem for the ticket. The move caught the vice president’s team by surprise.
Even though Harris and Walz have worked together for a long time, they are having a hard time winning over key union members. This is part of a larger shift in politics away from the Democratic Party.
Democrats are worried that their power in unions is waning, especially in industrial, male-heavy groups like the Teamsters and firemen. This is because Harris took over the ticket from Biden, who was praised by union leaders as a strong supporter of organised labour.
To make up for it, Harris has relied on Walz to help boost the labour appeal of the ticket. Harris has a history of supporting workers but does not have many close ties to the country’s unions.
While running for office, the governor often talks about Harris’s part in Biden’s “most pro-union U.S. administration in history.”
The International Brotherhood of Electric Workers, which is very powerful, also backs Harris and Walz. Biden dropped out of the race for president on July 21.
Less than 72 hours later, the governor called top labour leaders, including Lee Saunders, President of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, to find out what they thought about his future.
Later, as Harris’ running mate, Walz spoke at the group’s national convention and helped get the backing of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
But even Walz, who has a lot of experience in unions, has to deal with doubters among working-class guys. Many blue-collar male voters who are not excited about Trump do not seem to be highly swayed by Walz’s folksy charm in interviews.
Campaign staff for Harris-Walz played down Walz’s role in the lack of endorsement by saying that he was not involved in the official talks with the union about a possible endorsement.
“Vice President Harris has always stood with firefighters and will always do so,” Harris campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said. “While Donald Trump tried to cut funding that keeps communities and firefighters safe,” Hitt said.
In a similar effort to the one they made after the Teamsters decision last month, Harris’s team is still trying to get support from local firefighter union chapters, especially in key swing states. A short time after the IAFF vote last week, firemen in Minnesota did say they supported Harris and Walz.
But it will not be easy for Democrats to get a lot of support from firefighters in swing states. They have to deal with union members who openly back Trump and want to remove Harris as their leader.
For example, in the weeks before the firemen’ union decided not to back him, union officials told Democrats and people who worked for Walz that their support was pretty much set in stone, according to five union officials and three other people who knew about the situation.
The union knew at least a week before the vote that Harris was losing the support, and it was likely already gone.
But many important local chapters, including those in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, as well as some officials in Los Angeles and Houston and a large group of rank-and-file members, put a lot of pressure on the union’s president, Edward Kelly, not to support Harris.
Some even threatened to leave the union if it did. After the union backed John Kerry in 2004, some groups did what they said they would do and left the union. The IAFF did not back Kerry in 2016. This year there was even more pressure.
Several union leaders said they thought Kelly did not want to endorsing a candidate this time because the organisation was so divided on politics.
As of early September, union officials thought the IAFF board had the votes to support Harris and planned to vote around September 21. However, on September 30, the union’s new board members, elected in August, took office.
One of them was a more pro-Trump official who replaced a pro-Harris official who was leaving to represent Texas and Oklahoma, according to three other union officials who were directly involved in the conversations.
It was just enough to keep Harris from getting the support. Three days later, Kelly said that the union had decided by a very small majority not to support any presidential candidate.
Kelly said in a statement soon after the vote, “This decision, which we took very seriously, is the best way to keep and strengthen our unity.”
Last week’s vote took place behind closed doors. Four union officials who were present say that Frank Lima, the No. 2 IAFF leader from California who is close with Harris, made the move for the board to support the vice president and Walz. But board members who were against Harris worked together to turn the results against her.
This included some who had argued against supporting the vice president because they thought her border policies were letting fentanyl into the country and making firefighters unsafe on the job.
She did win a voice vote, but she lost the final vote that counts, which was by 1.2 percentage points. Someone from the union who was at the board vote said, “It is like winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college.”
The IAFF would not say anything else about the vote besides what Kelly already said.
It looks like Harris and Walz’s strong support for workers does not seem to have much of an effect on the state level talks about endorsing firefighters either.
The state firefighters’ union has already chosen not to back Harris for president in Pennsylvania, which is a must-win state for her. There has never been an endorsement in a Presidential run, according to the group’s leader, Robert Brooks.
He said that the group would stick to that policy and let the International Association of Firefighters handle the matter. Brooks also did not think that anyone from his state would back him up.
The firefighters’ union in Michigan, which is also a key swing state, is still having meetings to decide if they want to give their own support.
Matt Sahr, who is in charge of the state union, went to Harris’s campaign event last Friday at a firehouse outside of Detroit. After her speech, he talked to the vice president one-on-one about problems related to firefighter policy.
In an interview, Sahr said, “We are still trying to figure it out, and we know that our members have different backgrounds and opinions.
But one thing we know for sure is that we will support candidates who we think are best for labour.” “As a union, we do not deal with social issues; we only deal with work issues.”
Mahlon Mitchell is a member of the IAFF board and leads the local chapter of the state’s firemen union in Madison, which is a blue stronghold. He voted last week to support Harris in the endorsement vote.
Mitchell is also a DNC member for 2024 and ran for governor of Wisconsin in 2018. He is in charge of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, which has 4,000 firefighters and paramedics working in the key swing state.
Members of Mitchell’s Wisconsin union are still being asked for their thoughts before the union can decide if it will put a presidential support to a board vote.
According to three state-level union members who were given privacy to talk about private conversations, if it does happen, union members in the state think the outcome will be a close vote in favour of Harris.
But some members do not want to get into a fight over support.
The [union] board needs to talk about it and weigh the pros and cons, according to someone who was privy to the meetings but was asked to remain anonymous so they could speak freely.
The person said that most people in the state are Republicans, “even though labour leaders tend to be more Democratic.”
Mitchell said in an interview that he had not asked his state board or any locals to back Harris. He did, however, confirm, “I voted to support Vice President Harris because I think she is going to be the best for our jobs.”
He also said, “We are going to follow our process and see what happens.”
In an interview, Jim Hoffa, the former long-time head of the Teamsters, said he thought that last month’s decision by his group not to support was “a big mistake” and showed “a lack of leadership.”
Local chapters have backed Harris and Walz, but Hoffa said that in key swing states, the powerful, nationally coordinated GOTV effort that usually comes with a full union endorsement would have been very helpful.
“That is a loss for Harris and Walz.”