BOSTON—Tim Walz was cheered one day. J.D. Vance was booed, twice, the next day. And after all that ruckus, the International Association of Fire Fighters has yet to vote on whom to endorse for president this fall. The union’s still holding town hall meetings nationwide on that decision.
But the prospect of picking up the IAFF’s nod brought the two major-party vice presidential nominees —Democrat Walz, then Republican Vance—to speak to the hundreds of IAFF delegates and guests at the union’s convention in Boston at the end of August.
Both made pitches for the union’s endorsement. It’s valuable, given IAFF’s size, its past political credibility and clout, and its ability to work on Capitol Hill.
After all, this union’s credibility and early backing rescued then-Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., from a floundering campaign and catapulted him to victory in the Iowa caucuses in 2004, and ultimately that year’s Democratic presidential nomination.
And at its legislative conference eight years ago, IAFF members repeatedly interrupted Joe Biden’s speech by waving yellow-on-black signs and chanting the slogan on them, “Run, Joe, run!” Just days later Biden formally entered the Democratic race and went on to win the White House that fall.
There’s another reason pols court the IAFF. Unlike other unions, it’s politically split right down the middle in party registration: 44% Democratic, 44% Republican, and the rest independent, according to former President Harold Schaitberger. But it’s endorsed Democrats in past presidential races.
So when Vance was met by boos as he marched onto the stage, to be greeted by current President Edward Kelly, and Secretary-Treasurer Frank Lima, it was noticeable. So was his churlish reaction.
“It sounds like we got some fans and some haters,” said the Ohio Republican senator, convicted felon Donald Trump’s running mate. Then he announced that “on the way here, I learned the New York City Fire Marshals Benevolent Association endorsed Trump-Vance ticket.” There are two IAFF locals in the Big Apple, and the association Vance mentioned is neither of them.
Vance later repeated Trump’s challenge of eight years ago: “What the hell do you have to lose?”
The second round of boos came midway through Vance’s speech when he claimed he and Trump “would be the most pro-worker Republican ticket in history.” Other IAFF members reacted another way: They wore the red T-shirts popularized by Auto Workers President Shawn Fain. “Trump is a scab,” the shirts read.
Vance’s declaration about himself and Trump ignored some history by two Republican presidents.
Teddy Roosevelt forced coal mine owners to bargain with the United Mine Workers more than a century ago and Abraham Lincoln declared—and backed it up–that “labor is superior to capital.”
Vance also ignored more ignoble pieces of GOP history. One was when Calvin Coolidge, then Massachusetts governor, wired to AFL President Samuel Gompers “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere at any time.” Coolidge then broke the 1919 Boston police strike. Coolidge’s action got him the party’s VP nod the next year—and the White House later.
Vance’s statement also conveniently overlooks not only Trump’s union-busting record, his crossing of SAG-AFTRA picket lines, and his stiffing of Laborers who toiled to build his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, but also Trump’s anti-worker appointees to the Labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board. And it overlooks Vance’s own “zero” on AFL-CIO key votes.
Not to mention Trump’s platform, Project 2025, which calls for the outright abolition of public worker unions—such as the Fire Fighters. More boos rained down, even as Vance declared “We will defend your right to collective bargaining.” But he didn’t say how.
By contrast, Walz got nothing but cheers, repeatedly, especially when he reminded the crowd of both his pro-union record as Minnesota governor and presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s record as California Attorney General, U.S. senator, and Joe Biden’s vice president.
There, Walz pointed out, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote for the American Recovery Act. It kept money flowing to local fire departments for more equipment, updated firehouses and to “hire, train and retain” firefighters, despite the coronavirus-caused Great Recession. And as AG, Harris went to bat for Fire Fighters who lost pension money to big bank finagling, and recovered it, Walz noted.
He also noted Biden pushed through, with Harris’s help in the lobbying, legislation to give 11,000 federal firefighters, all of them union members, a long-overdue and much-needed raise.
Walz strongly endorsed the Protect The Right To Organize Act, labor’s top legislative priority, and one big reason to hold the Senate and take back the U.S. House. Senate Republicans, aided by renegade Sens. Joe Manchin, Ind-W. Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, Ind-Ariz., stymied the PRO Act by filibustering against even letting it come up for debate. The Republican-run House never even considered it.
And Walz took his own shots at Project 2025, the radical right tome crafted by the extremist Heritage Foundation and dozens of high-level Trumpite officials-in-waiting.
“One of the goals of their project 2025 is to screw the middle class,” said Walz. Trump and the GOP would “make it harder for workers to collectively bargain, eliminating overtime, and slashing taxes on the ultra-wealthy by imposing a national sales tax”—Trump’s tariffs on all imports—“on the rest of us.
“I’m an old-time football coach. If you have a playbook, you plan to use it and Project 2025 is a plan to reshape what America looks like, moving away from the middle class and putting it right back on the oligarchs and the wealthy at the top.”
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