Chris Dodd for President

Democrat Chris Dodd yesterday picked up one of the presidential campaign's first major labor endorsements -- from the same union that helped propel John F. Kerry to the Democratic nomination in 2004.

The International Association of Fire Fighters will announce today that it will back the Connecticut senator, who has campaigned nonstop in early presidential primary states and spent tens of thousands on television advertising, but has failed to get out of the single digits in the polls and break out of the second tier of candidates.

"Chris Dodd has been under the radar so far and this news could be the very thing that could allow him to pop up," said Wayne Lesperance, a political science professor at New England College in Henniker, N.H.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The firefighters' union endorsed Democrat Chris Dodd for president on Wednesday, shrugging off his low poll ratings and promising a strong grass roots effort to help turn around his 2008 campaign.

Harold Schaitberger, president of the 280,000-member International Association of Fire Fighters, said he was not discouraged by Dodd's second-tier position in a Democratic race led by high-profile stars like Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.

John Kerry's presidential bid was dead. If you didn't know that in September 2003, all you had to do was ask almost any pundit, politicians or political writer.

We were wrong. Kerry picked up a key endorsement, poured his own money into the race and took advantage of the fact that Democratic front-runner Howard Dean's campaign had quietly peaked in the summer of 2003.

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Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) picked up the first significant prize in the competition for labor union endorsements yesterday, winning the support of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) in what his advisers believe will be an important boost to his presidential primary campaign.

The firefighters count 281,000 members, meaning they are only the 10th-largest union in the AFL-CIO. But they are among the most politically active and symbolically prized labor groups in the country, in part because of the heroic actions of firefighters at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon when terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001.

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International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) President Harold Schaitberger told The Hill Monday that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has won the union’s coveted endorsement.

In an exclusive interview with The Hill, Schaitberger said Dodd was the candidate who had “earned their support,” and that his long legislative record on labor’s behalf was the key to winning the endorsement.

Schaitberger declined to comment on why other candidates, particularly those considered to be frontrunners, came up short. He said the Democratic field was strong but added that Dodd separated himself from the others by going beyond support for their legislative agenda and being “the guy who really carries our water” dating back to 1976.

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