A proxy war in the Firefighters Union?

Next week's IAFF Convention will lead the union to new leadership. What's at stake?

The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) is electing new leadership, starting with the official nominating process their convention next week. Union conventions tend to cover a lot of different sorts of business and ceremonial functions, and there are other things on the table than leadership elections, but this election stands out as a rare, meaningfully contested election for national union leadership. And for the first time in twenty years, Harold Schaitberger is not on the ballot. The longtime IAFF President announced in September that he would not seek re-election, in the wake of accusations of financial misconduct, namely in improperly using union funds and drawing an improper pension, plus evading taxes.

True or not, the accusations are much more interesting for having originated with Schaitberger’s own Secretary-Treasurer, Ed “Edzo” Kelly of the Boston IAFF, who took office in 2016 in a three-way race for an open seat as the “anti-Schaitberger”, upsetting Schaitberger’s pick, and is now the presumptive front-runner to replace Schaitberger. The motivation behind Kelly’s move to oust Schaitberger seems more than good government unionism, and more than his own personal ambitions. As Schaitberger put it in his lengthy retirement announcement, “I have sadly watched as division has been sewn within our ranks. I see much of the anger and politics of personal destruction that have spread on social media. The innuendo, baseless allegations and misleading accusations…. I believe I’ve been, wrongly, the stalking horse of much of the false information, division, anger and rancor that I see taking place in so many of our districts. I know many of you – our affiliate leadership – are hearing it from your members, in many ways replicating what we see in the United States during this current political season and election this November 3.”

The idea that the IAFF’s internal election is on some level a proxy war for Trump-Biden politics isn’t just the fever dreams of an over-ripe incumbent. Rachel Cohen at the Intercept has the best reporting on this, and the deep dive is well worth the read. Soon after coming into office, Kelly hired on Matt Golsteyn as his chief of operations. Golsteyn is much better known as an admitted war criminal who was pardoned by Trump. It does not seem unrelated that the insider knowledge of the probe into Schaitberger’s pension activity was leaked to conservative outlets, and the subject of a Federal probe from the Trump Department of Justice.

Why would the Trump administration and conservative media care about the ouster of Schaitberger, aside from general anti-union sentiment? Schaitberger’s main claim to fame in the IAFF was increasing their political spending by 600% over 20 years, building up the FIREPAC, and coming out strong and early for Democratic primary candidates. In 2004, Schaitberger was rewarded with an AFL political post for being the first to endorse John Kerry. In the summer of 2007, the union granted an early endorsement to Chris Dodd for the Democratic nomination. In 2015, the IAFF considered an early Clinton endorsement, but pumped the brakes, apparently because the board hoped Joe Biden would enter the race. And, most prominently, the IAFF had the distinction of making one of the earliest union endorsements in a presidential race ever, giving Joe Biden their support in February of 2019, a full twenty one months before the election. So one can imagine why a Trump loyalist like Golsteyn, and the Trump administration itself, in the months leading up to November’s election, would care about discrediting and taking out Schaitberger at the top of the IAFF. And whether Kelly is a true-blue Trumpist or just wants Schaitberger out of the way, it cleared his path to the IAFF presidency.

In October, however, the path became somewhat less clear. Mahlon Mitchell, the president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, announced his candidacy for the General Presidency. Mitchell is an interesting figure in union politics, and certainly in the IAFF. In a union known for consent decrees against racial hiring discrimination, and for its perceived closeness with some of the most reactionary elements of the union movement -- namely municipal FOPs -- Mitchell is a Black progressive union leader who lived through Act 10 in Wisconsin. Mitchell is also notable for his prior political ambitions; in 2012, Mitchell won the Democratic primary for the Lieutenant Governor recall election in Wisconsin, though he lost to Scott Walker’s runningmate. In 2018, he ran in the Democratic primary in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race, coming in a distant second with 16% of the vote. He ran on raising the minimum wage, creating a Wisconsin public health insurance option, and other progressive hallmarks. Notably, he was endorsed by then-Senator Kamala Harris.

While Mitchell’s candidacy was always likely to garner some Midwestern support, being a statewide leader in Wisconsin, the campaign season has seen large and further afield locals flock to Mitchell. By the end of October, Mitchell had the endorsements of not just the Wisconsin and Minnesota statewide IAFFs, but New Mexico and Arizona as well. Since then, Utah, Ontario, North Dakota, Michigan Illinois, DC, and California have weighed in for Mitchell. Cities as well as statewide organizations have made their own endorsements, and Mitchell has picked up some big cities, most notably this week winning Chicago Local 2’s endorsement, after local President Jim Tracy dropped out of the General President’s in early January, citing health reasons. Kelly has earned the endorsement of at least 26 states and 2 Canadian provinces, so it’s not like Mitchell is sweeping the competition, by any means. But he’s less Ralph Nader, and more Bernie Sanders, in terms of competitiveness. And something like 100 of Kelly’s 600 state and local endorsements came in before Mitchell even announced -- which could mean an early advantage to Kelly, or could mean some locals and delegates might reconsider. Those who are tracking delegate counts more closely say Kelly has something like a two-to-one delegate lead, but half of the delegates haven’t made public endorsements.

The presidency isn’t the only issue at the convention, nor on the ballot. There’s a three-way race for Kelly’s current position, the number-two spot, General Secretary-Treasurer. There are also downballot races among the 16 District Vice Presidencies and three Trustees. Of these, the District 11 race in Oklahoma and Texas seems the most hotly contested, along Kelly-Schaitberger lines, but as far as I have seen, there have been no formal slates announced. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the convention is being held online, from January 25-28, during which candidates will be formally nominated. The election itself will be conducted among elected delegates through a mail ballot process, with results not likely until late February.

As for what all this means for IAFF, it’s hard to say. There is sloganeering, around Mitchell’s #UnitedIAFF and Kelly’s rather revanchist #TakeBackOurUnion. There are of course the likely aftereffects of Schaitberger’s absence as a political player in the Democratic Party, but what this election means for working firefighters is less clear.