Ladder to the top?

He wasn’t on this occasion talking about his County Sligo-born grandmother, another strong-willed woman, who for years motorcycled down from the Bronx to her job as a waitress on Wall Street — the first family member, he said wryly, to work in the financial sector.
Rather, Bridget Murphy was born a century earlier, in 1821. She kept her family intact after her husband died of cholera, saved her pennies and eventually opened a small store.
The congregation greeted the story’s message of hard work and the value of education with murmurs of approval, but the woman’s married name has a particular resonance, too, in African-American communities. For Bridget Murphy Kennedy’s great-grandson, born 29 years after her death, became the youngest man ever elected to the presidency of the United States.
“I love that you’re allowed to address Baptist congregations,” said McAdams, who is a practicing Catholic. For the last several months, he’s spent part of his Sunday speaking to such churches, particularly in the African-American community that is crucial to his strategy for wresting the 17th District’s Democratic nomination from Eliot Engel, the 16-year congressman. If victorious next Tuesday, McAdams should easily overcome the Republican nominee in November to become the first-ever serving or former professional firefighter to be elected to Congress.
“He’s a hard-working, assertive candidate,” said campaign manager Andrew Hysell. “He likes meeting people. There are politicians who don’t.”
Each morning before 7, McAdams leaves the Yonkers home he was raised in, and where he now lives with his wife and their 2-year-old son (the couple are expecting a second child in January), to hand out leaflets at subway and Metro North stations. After a full day’s campaigning, he then spends the evening going door to door.
“It’s an old-school campaign,” McAdams said. For example, the third in a family of six children, he relies on the support of a large extended family, including his father, a former sanitation worker who has traveled from Florida to help out.
The firefighter’s vigorous campaign has shaken things up and the incumbent has a battle on his hands.
Though McAdams has nowhere near the resources at Engel’s disposal, he has nonetheless raised an impressive $400,000 over the last 11 months. And he’s gotten 10 major labor endorsements.
“That just doesn’t happen in a primary race where there’s a sitting congressman,” said Hysell, a veteran of several campaigns around the country.
Hysell also points to the strong backing from two senior politicians, Councilman Larry Seabrook and Assemblyman Carl Heastie. Seabrook came close to beating Engel in a bitter primary contest in 2000 and is putting the full weight of his well-oiled Bronx machine behind McAdams. But at least 5,000 of the 19,000 who backed him in that race won’t be eligible to vote after a redistricting that substantially favored the sitting congressman.
About 25 percent of those likely to turn out in the Democratic primary are African American. The fact that McAdams is warmly received in black neighborhoods may in part be attributed to his winning personality, but Seabrook and Heastie’s campaigning on the ground has paved the way.
The McAdams camp estimated that a further 7 percent of likely primary voters are of Caribbean origin and 10 percent Hispanic.
It’s thought that Jewish Democrats, about 25 percent, will stick with the long-serving congressman, who himself is Jewish. However, the McAdams campaign is hoping that a firefighter — one who was propelled into activism by his experiences following Sept. 11, 2001 — can draw Italian- and Irish-American votes, which make up 7-10 percent and 14 percent of the primary electorate respectively.
Like many congressional districts these days, the 17th District has a peculiar shape; it covers northern sections of the Bronx, reaches up into Westchester and swings over to Rockland County. But in doing so, links some of the best-known Irish neighborhood and towns in the New York area: Woodlawn, Yonkers and Pearl River.
“I want to energize the Irish vote,” the firefighter said.
Engel got most of that in 2000, with Seabrook getting a mere 40 votes in Woodlawn, for example.
The McAdams campaign hopes voters will be attracted to a candidate who has compiled an interesting resume in the 15 years since he left high school, at 17 and 5-foot-11, and joined the Navy. (If he’d reached his present height of 6-6, he might have followed a different path. “I’d probably have gotten a basketball scholarship,” he said.)
His strong performance led to his being selected for the Presidential Honor Guard, receiving security clearance to serve close to George Bush Sr. in the White House and other sensitive locations in Washington, D.C.
After three years, he enrolled for a business degree at Iona College and then upon graduation got a job with Dean Witter.
When his sister gave birth at age 17, he decided to take time off to help raise his niece. Five months later, he got the call from the FDNY. His mother was anxious about his safety and encouraged him to continue his financial career.
McAdams, though, took up the offer, saying he could go back to a financial career if he didn’t like the fire department.
His mother came around, not long before her death, when she met other firefighters at a Christmas party and witnessed the remarkable camaraderie in the department. “This is your job,” she told him.
McAdams married Tracy Ann Wheeler on Sept. 1, 2001. After spending a few days in her native New England, they set off for Hawaii. Before 2 a.m. local time on Sept. 11, he got a call from his sister Deirdre saying that a plane had hit the trade center. They turned on the TV to see a plane hit the other tower. “We knew it was going to be a bad day for everybody,” he said.
In fact, several of their wedding guests were among the people who died that day.
Back home, McAdams was selected to train with Squad 41, an elite HazMat rescue team. But after six month volunteering at Ground Zero, he decided he could best help his comrades by working in the union. His plan, though, to unseat the 17-year incumbent treasurer of the Uniformed Firefighters Association was seen as overly ambitious. But after a vigorous campaign, which saw him visiting every firehouse in the city, McAdams garnered 70 percent of the vote.
There wasn’t one event that acted as a trigger to his seeking higher office, he said, but Sept. 11 was key.
McAdams believes that the government’s first priority should be the defeat of Al Queda. “But George W. Bush has done the opposite, invading Iraq on false pretenses and in the process draining money and attention from the pursuit of the Taliban and the defense of our ports and cities,” he said.
There were also a series of incidents that grated. One was a visit by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to Ground Zero at Christmastime 2001. “He had a winter coat, and a nice scarf. But we had three zeros,” he said in reference to the lack of a pay raise for firefighters over several years. “When he had the opportunity to help us, he didn’t.”
He also said that when he was part of visiting delegation of firefighters to Washington, many important figures made time for them, including Sens. Ted Kennedy and Hilary Clinton, but others, among them his opponent, Engel, did not.
McAdams conceded, though, that when he stood silently as a young navy recruit on Capitol Hill and in the White House, unable to utter a word or move a muscle, the notion of going back to Washington as a elected official was more than a fleeting thought.
“I just didn’t think I’d have a chance to do it at the age of 32,” he said.