IF the Democrats had succeeded in winning back control of the House of Representatives, much of the credit would have gone to a soft spoken, Irish American labour leader who looks like an avuncular parish priest.
Yet Mr John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, became a hate figure for the Republican when his organisation targeted of their House seats, spending up to $20 million in TV ads attacking their voting records on labour issues.
The fact that Republicans succeeded in fighting off much of the labour onslaught on vulnerable seats is now a serious setback for Mr Sweeney and the AFL-CIO and there will be much soul searching about what went wrong. The Republicans are likely to be bitter about the political role of the labour movement in this election and this may show when legislation favouring workers comes before Congress.
Just two years ago, the labour movement in the US was being written off as in terminal decline as the Newt Gingrich Republicans took control of the House on the basis of a "revolution" with an aggressive pro business agenda.
As Mr Sweeney put it in an interview with Irish America magazine: "Frankly, we got scared to death. We saw the Gingrich Congress evolve and unfold their programme and we got scared. We decided this was only the tip of the iceberg, and we'd better react soon."
What Mr Sweeney did not say was that this scare helped him to become the new president of the AFL-CIO a year later in a bitterly fought campaign with another Bronx Irish American Catholic, Mr Tom Donahue. Morale in the labour movement was plummeting in the face of Republican successes and membership was as low as 15 per cent of the US workforce, half of what it was before the second World War.
Mr Sweeney's victory was followed by a vigorous membership drive, but he really made headlines last January when he announced his plan to levy union members for a $35 million fund to target 75 Republican seats in the November election. He was denounced by an outraged Republican Party as a ruthless "Boss of Big Labour".
The Sweeney inspired TV ads attacking the vulnerable Republicans on their voting records on Medicare, social security and education caught the party by surprise. By the time it struck back, much damage had been done.
The Republican counter offensive included a stream of pamphlets headed "Washington Union Boss Watch", listing labour leaders' lavish lifestyles and alleged ties to mobsters.
Mr Sweeney, who has cut back on some of the plusher aspects of labour leaders' get togethers, was unfazed by the attacks. "Obviously, we're hitting some raw nerves, he commented. "Two years ago, American unions were history. Today we are making history."
Mr Sweeney (63) is an unlikely looking labour boss. His father and mother, James and Agnes, were immigrants from Co Leitrim in the 1920s to the Bronx, in New York. His father became a bus driver, active in the transport union under the legendary Mike Quill from Co Kerry, while his mother worked as a maid. John got a union job digging graves in a Westchester cemetery to help pay his way through college, where he earned an economics degree.
After a spell working for IBM, Mr Sweeney took a cut in salary to work full time for the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union. Later he switched to the Service Employees' International Union (SEIU) and rose to become president in 1980. He met his wife, Maureen, on a picket line.
They live with their son and daughter in Washington, where Mr Sweeney has an office overlooking the White House in the impressive AFL-CIO headquarters which oversees the activities of the 78 - affiliated unions, with about 13 million workers.
Mr Sweeney keeps close ties to the Democrats and spoke at their Chicago convention, where he sat next to Mrs Hillary Clinton. He is involved in helping along the peace process in Northern Ireland, for which he received the Flax Trust award this year. He accompanied President Clinton there last year.
Mr Sweeney, with 130 of his officials and thousands of volunteers, campaigned all over the country in the battle to win control of the House for the Democrats. While he was confident it could be done several weeks before the election, it was looking less likely as polling day arrived and voters seemed reluctant to give the Democrats.a clean sweep of White House and Congress. Now the results have shown that this is the case.
Congressman Peter King of New York is a friend of Mr Sweeney, although he is a Republican. Before the election, Mr King said, "If the Democrats take back the Congress, Sweeney could well be one of the two or three most powerful people in the country. If they don't, he's really hurt organised labour because of the way he has totally alienated the Republican Party with his political campaign." How deep this alienation will go must now be a serious concern for Mr Sweeney.