No one enjoys a chance to poke a little fun at the mannerisms of Boston's Brahmin class as much as those who grew up in its working-class shadows. Which is probably why the daughter of St. Peter's parish in Dorchester, Mass., delivers such a wicked funny impression of the deep patrician voice that was on the other end of the line when she picked up the phone at home one Friday night last November. "Mary Beth," she says, tucking her chin, locking her jaw and dropping a register or two, "this is John Kerry." Mary Beth Cahill knew why he was calling. The presidential candidate whom everyone had once anointed the Democratic front runner was careering toward oblivion. Kerry was about to fire his campaign manager and wanted Senator Edward Kennedy's chief of staff to take over an operation that was short on money, full of backbiting and left in the dust by the Internet-and-anger-fueled phenomenon that was Howard Dean. "So I showed up Monday morning," she says, "and that was that."
It was not the first time the former congressional-office receptionist had got a 911 call from a desperate politician. At a time when operatives can become as famous as the candidates they work for, Cahill's is not a name you hear on the cable-and-best-seller circuit. But few can match her record for turning around campaigns that are just this side of hopeless. And she was one of the few people left in Washington who shared Kerry's belief that his luck hadn't run out. "She felt it was winnable," Kerry told TIME. "She distinctly felt that, as I did. But we knew we had to make some adjustments."
That's a delicate way of describing the upheaval that took place when Cahill arrived the following Monday morning at the shabby Capitol Hill town house that serves as campaign headquarters. Three months later, Kerry finds himself with 18 primaries and caucus wins under his belt and could be on the verge of clinching the nomination. Campaigns are won by candidates, of course, but someone had to come up with and stick to a plan that would have Kerry standing in just the right spot if lightning struck. That was Cahill's job, and the against-the-odds strategy that she executed paid off in ways that more than justified the confidence Kerry had placed in her. "It just liberated me," Kerry says of her arrival. "It completely liberated me to focus on my message and focus on the energy I needed to put into day-to-day campaigning and on the people I was meeting. To not be distracted, to be able to really just give it 100% focus, which is what it takes. It helped to make me a better candidate."