Buoying Birmingham’s spirits is a campaign team that assures the Senate president he’s still in the game. In addition to the internal poll cited by everyone associated with the campaign, his consultants look at a primary model that they are convinced will work in their candidate’s favor. It’s largely an urban strategy built on the support of the organized trade unions for whom Birmingham’s worked most of his adult life. His team believes the 2002 Democratic primary — like last year’s special election to replace Moakley and the 1998 gubernatorial primary — will be one with relatively low turnout. Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, who at one time was Birmingham’s competitor in the governor’s race (Galvin never declared, but he spoke at the 2001 Democratic Convention, in Springfield, as a prospective candidate for governor), has become an unlikely ally in that he too predicts a contest with fewer than 700,000 voters. In 1998, a low-turnout race, the Democratic primary drew 633,919 voters. In 1990, a year of intense political interest, 1,095,475 made the trip to the polls. In this context, the combined endorsements of the AFL-CIO, the MTA, and the MTF take on more importance.

Birmingham’s supporters, such as state AFL-CIO president Bob Haynes, maintain that these unions and their affiliates in themselves represent more than 500,000 voters. "All you have to do is the math," says Haynes. "All you need is 50 percent of the members to get out the vote and win 75 percent of [the union workers who come out]." Bingo: a Birmingham victory. Labor activists now say that the union’s get-out-the-vote effort in 1998 gave Democratic nominee Scott Harshbarger 10 points and brought him close to Cellucci, despite Harshbarger’s less-than-stellar campaign. And, while Haynes won’t put a dollar figure on what his endorsement means for Birmingham, he cites some of the things the AFL-CIO and its constituent unions plan to do on the Senate president’s behalf. He says the unions plan to send three different mailings to members and conduct two job-site leaflet drops. On top of that, the unions will engage in a comprehensive phone-bank campaign and, finally, do a "labor walk" on the Saturday before the election, where union activists canvass important communities on foot and convince voters to select Birmingham.

Birmingham consultant Michael Shea insists that, contrary to some observers’ beliefs, his candidate does not need the equivalent of a "perfect storm" — e.g., an actual hurricane traveling up to Massachusetts from the Gulf Coast that would force all voters but those for Birmingham to stay away from the polls on September 17 — to achieve a victory. "We have a message that we know works," Shea says. "This guy is the embodiment of the Democratic ideal. We’ll win with a high turnout as well." (However, Birmingham’s pollster, Michael Bocian of Washington-based Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, acknowledges that his favorable July survey was based on a low turnout with a low number of independents participating: "The people who are most likely to turn out are older voters and union voters, and are more likely to be Birmingham supporters. A lot of surveys underrepresent those voters.")

Not so fast, suggests UMass Boston political analyst Lou DiNatale. While voters so far seem to be snoozing when it comes to the governor’s race, that may change when a tsunami of television advertising hits the airways. DiNatale’s calculates that $15 million to $20 million of political advertising may air on Boston television — excluding the New Hampshire gubernatorial and congressional candidates who will also buy time in the Boston media markets. That’s a far cry from the 1998 primary (when the total turnout, Democrats and Republicans included, was little more than 26 percent of eligible voters) and the soporific candidacy of Harshbarger, whom polls showed already emerging as the leading Democrat long before Primary Day. The Birmingham campaign’s optimism is based on "a tried-and-true institutional Democratic political scenario," says DiNatale. "It is based on turnout and the abilities of field organizations."

What makes Birmingham’s plan less credible is his campaign’s inability to do many of the things it promised at the beginning — other than raise money. Not only did Birmingham not take most of the delegates in the February caucuses, he failed even to win the Democratic Convention. His television ads have failed to cause a stir, and his debate performances, while effective, don’t seem to have helped him much. With so little time left in the campaign, Birmingham and his team need to shake things up — quickly.

IN MANY WAYS, there’s more to Birmingham than meets the eye. Shortly after 4 p.m. on Wednesday, August 14, he showed up at the gym at Madison Park to play pick-up basketball. To say it was hot would be an outrageous understatement: stifling, oven-like, 100-degree-plus heat permeated the gym. The Senate president nonetheless threw on a green Birmingham-campaign shirt and black Salem State gym shorts and lined up to play hoop, to the amazement of the young crowd in the gym. One young man incredulously asked Birmingham if he were the referee. "No," the candidate said. "I don’t referee." During the two consecutive games, Birmingham was the oldest player on the court. He ran up and down the floor, dribbled with both hands, made several assists. When it was all over, I gave him a recap of his on-court achievements. "You do the little things [in the game]," one wise guy cracked.

Birmingham, to be sure, didn’t dominate the game, but he played better than expected. Now, with less than four weeks remaining on the campaign trail, he’ll have to match that performance in the political arena and show the Commonwealth what all his intimates believe: that he has what it takes. His family members — Birmingham’s most loyal boosters — think he can do it. When asked whether she’s worried about how a primary loss might affect her brother, the Senate president’s sister, Nancy Birmingham, a school administrator in Chelsea, responded defiantly: "He’s not going to lose. That’s impossible."

He’s defied the odds before — going from Chelsea to Harvard to Oxford. It seems unlikely that he can do it again this time. But that isn’t stopping Birmingham from showing state voters his moves.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com