On a sunny Saturday morning, Mike Michaud is standing in front of a modest home in a working-class Brewer neighborhood.

A man, woman and two young girls spill out onto the top step of the home, the door propped open.

Michaud tells them he’s running for Congress and asks for their votes.

He knows it’s likely he’ll get them anyway. This is not a random visit. The home was targeted. The couple’s names were included on a list tucked inside a manila envelope carried here by a campaign volunteer.

The man at the door, Stanley Coombs, is a pipe fitter. He worked in the local mill 15 years, but lost his job recently along with his health-care insurance.

His story is familiar to Michaud, but Coombs’ wife, Christina, tells it anyway.

“Everyone’s planning for retirement and I’m just planning for next week,” she says. “I was taught to be patriotic and respectful … but it’s very hard to explain to your 8-year-old that the president doesn’t care.”

These are Michaud’s people. He is counting on them to return him to office after Nov. 2.

A Democrat completing his first term representing Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, he tells the family he understands their plight. Unlike most members of Congress, he can make that claim without exaggeration.

A mill worker for 28 years, Michaud traded in his work shirt for the button-down dress shirt he is wearing this day, though its collar is still blue.

Although he never lost his mill job, one of his mill-worker brothers has been laid off. Michaud can count scores of friends and fellow workers who have found themselves collecting unemployment – or worse, running out the clock on their jobless benefits.

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Michaud, 49, is hoping the strategy that won him a hard-fought six-way primary and a close (52-48 percent) general election in 2002 will work again this November.

He is shoring up his base by relying on the volunteer-rich local labor council to knock on doors. Maine has lost nearly one-quarter of its manufacturing jobs over the past four years. His audience could not be more sympathetic.

Earlier in the morning, Michaud rallied a roomful of flannel and bluejean-clad union card holders who bulked up on pancakes and French toast before hitting the streets.

“We talk about domestic issues. Jobs. That’s what’s it’s gonna be about,” he says. “That’s what I hear over and over again from people in the 2nd District; jobs and health care.”

Two of the roughly 50 people in the room are Ralph and Doris Phillips. He was laid off from the Eastern Fine Paper mill in Brewer after 25 years working on a paper machine. She lost her job due to a neck injury a year after she started at the mill.

They’ve gone through bankruptcy three times. She had to give up her physical therapy because it was too costly, she says.

But Doris Phillips appears ready to work today, even though it’s Saturday. She wants to see Michaud re-elected.

“He’s a very gracious man and he responds,” she says. “He’s working for the people.”

Michaud shares the podium with John Sweeney, president of the national AFL-CIO, the largest union organization in the United States.

Sweeney talks about the “tough, tough time” Michaud must be having in Washington with “this horrible leadership that we have in the Congress.”

But it’s clear that Sweeney, like the others in the room, takes comfort in knowing that a union member belongs to that august political body at the U.S. Capitol, and he knows how important it is to keep that important foothold.

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Ten minutes away, in Old Town, local residents line the main street for the town’s annual Riverfest parade.

Michaud’s supporters march in a cluster, toting red, white and blue campaign signs. But Michaud lags far behind, shaking hands and chatting up the parade’s onlookers.

One of them is Kevin Dubay of Old Town. He lost his job in the local mill after working there 27 years. He found another job eventually, but it lacks the benefits of the mill job, he says.

After the parade, Michaud climbs into an SUV, talks on his cell phone, sips a bottomless cup of coffee and waits while mail from his East Millinocket home is delivered by campaign workers. Then he is off to Augusta.

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At the Maine Firefighter Memorial, behind the State House, Michaud gives his second speech of the day. This time, he is not a candidate, but a congressman speaking to a group of fire officials representing firehouses around the state.

His delivery is more forceful than two years ago. However, soft spoken, with halting speech and a shy countenance, Michaud still appears to lack the polish of the practiced politician.

Like his father, grandfather and four brothers, he went to work at the Great Northern Paper Co. mill in East Millinocket after graduating from high school. The money was good and the prospects of getting a better job after going in debt for college lacked luster.

His political career was born of frustration with continued pollution of the Penobscot River. He went on to serve seven terms in the Maine House and four in the Senate. In 2002, he was barred from seeking a fifth term due to the state’s term-limit law.

Being Catholic with a French family name appeals to many voters in the 2nd Congressional District’s northern and central regions.

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Besides appealing to labor, Michaud also has established a voting record that has repeatedly won him the support of Maine’s sporting community. He recently sided with proponents of lifting a ban on certain assault-style guns.

He won endorsement of the powerful Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine and has the backing of the Maine Snowmobile Association.

Michaud complains that it had been easier and more effective to reach across the aisle and work with his Republican counterparts in the state Senate than in the U.S. House. Strong partisanship looms over the U.S. Capitol. Nevertheless, he claims to have passed 10 bills in his first term in the minority party.

Serving on transportation, veterans’ affairs and small business committees, he says he is able to represent Maine’s most pressing interests.

Attending a show later in the day in Augusta sponsored by the Maine Snowmobile Association, Michaud encounters the owners of Bishop’s Motel in Jackman.

Glenn Bishop becomes the second person at the show to praise Michaud for helping keep open the local health center. Then he adds, “It’s just nice to know somebody out there is paying attention to the small communities.”