Posted on 01/29/2004 11:42:03 PM PST by Stultis
John Kerry And Home Groan Politics
Jan. 26, 2004
This column from The New Republic was written by Michael Crowley.
The story of how John Kerry managed to drag his campaign off the autopsy table and into the lead for the 2004 Democratic nomination involves some murky combination of luck, cunning, and hard work. One important factor, however, is clearly the clutch help Kerry has gotten from his fellow Massachusetts Democrats. In the race's closing days, Ted Kennedy campaigned hard for Kerry, granting him the Democratic Party's ultimate seal of approval. Nationally-known Bay State congressmen, like Barney Frank and Ed Markey, also schlepped to Iowa on Kerry's behalf. And below the radar, several Boston-area politicos played key roles in Kerry's surprisingly effective ground organization--including a crew of state representatives and the legendary Boston operative Michael Whouley. Now, that same crew of hometown boosters has trekked on Kerry's behalf up to New Hampshire, where their local ties should make them even more effective advocates.
Between this outpouring and the way Kerry gets shorthanded as a classic "Massachusetts liberal Democrat," you'd think he was the ultimate insider in his home state, perfectly at home among his fellow Yankee lefties. But there's something ironic about the critical boost these hometown Dems are giving Kerry in his time of need. The truth is that, far from being a hero, Kerry has always been an awkward fit among the blue-collar Catholics who dominate the Massachusetts Democratic machine.
That tension dates back to Kerry's first, unsuccessful run for Congress in 1972, when he twice publicly changed his mind over which district he would claim as his home. (Kerry's wife even bought a house in working-class Worcester, where he had never lived; after Kerry chose a more suitable district closer to Boston, they never moved in to the Worcester home.) That district-shopping first introduced Kerry to local leaders -- who have an intense, often tribal, sense of political geography -- as an opportunist lacking strong local roots. ("There was a brashness to it," Kerry recently admitted to The Boston Globe.) He lost the race to an unimpressive opponent.
By 1984, Kerry was the state's sitting lieutenant governor and was running for an open Senate seat. Once again, local Democrats were less than enthusiastic about him. Far from having proved his local bona fides as the state's number two official, Kerry had "failed to build strong relations with the legislature," according to one veteran legislator. As a result, Massachusetts Dems went so far as to deny him the endorsement of their state convention (something that had also eluded Kerry in the run for lieutenant governor two years before). After a bitter primary campaign, Kerry edged out his opponent by less than 25,000 votes. It surely didn't help Kerry that the Democrat he defeated, James Shannon, was a protégé of the Massachusetts demigod Tip O'Neill, and a beloved figure among establishment hacks. In their hierarchy, Kerry was a nobody who'd whacked a made guy.
In the Senate, Kerry was able to avoid the hostile Boston political milieu. "He went to Washington and we never heard from him again," says the legislator. Unlike Ted Kennedy, who toiled away on pocketbook issues dear to the state's urban Democrats, Kerry preferred geopolitics -- taking on issues like Iran-Contra, the BCCI banking scandal, and U.S. relations with Vietnam. When Kerry wrote a book in 1997, it was a long treatise on emerging global threats. If Tip O'Neill ever explained to Kerry his theory that all politics is local, Kerry showed no sign of absorbing it.
Back in Boston, machine Democrats complained that Kerry paid little attention to them. Several legislators explained to Globe columnist Eileen McNamara last month that they never felt they could call Kerry for help. "Why bother?" one asked. "You'd be lucky to have anyone on his staff call you back." Around class-conscious Boston, where blue-collar pols were already suspicious of his Brahmin upbringing, Kerry developed a reputation for fancying himself above the scrum of retail politics, and more preoccupied with his own future than with the state party. And he paid for it. When Kerry once arrived late for a gathering of state Democrats, one cracked from the podium that Kerry had gotten "stuck in front of a mirror." After Kerry made a last-minute cancellation on a local Democratic event a few years ago, an irritated official sent out an email with the header: "GOOD NEWS! JOHN KERRY ISN'T COMING!"
Or consider the ambivalence toward Kerry felt by one state Democratic politico, a networked liberal who agrees with him on most issues. This Democrat has met Kerry numerous times over many years, shares close friends with him, and once even provided critical assistance to a Kerry campaign, about which he is certain Kerry was aware. And yet, he says, "as recently as three or four years ago I could be standing next to John and he wouldn't know my name." At one event several years ago Kerry ignored the man until they were "introduced," at which point Kerry pumped the man's hand with exaggerated familiarity. "I had been in his line of sight for five minutes without him recognizing me," the Democrat says. "Then he acts like we're old buddies!" Too late. "It was one of those embarrassing situations where everybody knew who I was, and he knew he was supposed to know," but plainly didn't. (What bothers this Democrat most, however, is the transformation Kerry underwent once he decided to run for president. "The next time I saw him," he says, "he made this big show of walking across the lawn and shouting [my name] for everyone to hear.")
The complaints weren't limited to minor local politicos. Fellow members of the state's congressional delegation often griped that Kerry did little to land funding for state projects like the Big Dig. ("[H]e over-studies issues without taking action," is how the Globe put it. Barney Frank has likened dealing with Kerry's office to "taking your Ph.D. orals.") Even Kennedy took a while to warm to Kerry. For years their staffs clashed famously and, although Kennedy never tweaked Kerry in public, he never showed much love for his junior colleague, either. For a while there was even talk that Kennedy might endorse John Edwards, whom he used to praise extravagantly -- even as Edwards was emerging as a pre-campaign rival to Kerry.
Now all that seems forgotten. Kennedy is by Kerry's side in New Hampshire, as are several members of the state delegation -- which unanimously endorsed Kerry long ago -- along with Whouley, the very image of a street-smart Bostonian. (Whouley, in turn, has tapped a crew of flinty local operatives, including two former Dukakis aides once known as the "Worcester mafia.") And mid-level state pols are pouring over the border. One legislator told me he expects the State House to shut down today and tomorrow so officials can head north to work for Kerry.
So how have Massachusetts pols learned to love the man they once loved to hate? Part of it may be a sense of Kerry as their son of a bitch. Part of it may be some genuine recent progress Kerry has made at stroking local egos. And then there's self-interest. Everyone assumes that a President Kerry will remember who helped him and who didn't. Says a Democratic legislator: "All these guys who didn't like him and didn't take him seriously, but felt like, 'Oh we have to be with him because he's the local guy' -- [last] week a lot of them got religion." That's something less than a deep belief in Kerry as a great future president. But after suffering years of Boston brickbats, John Kerry will take all the converts he can find.
Michael Crowley is an associate editor at TNR.
Whose Democratic Party? Al Gore? The Clintons? The Kennedys?
I said last night this is Gore v. Clintons v. Kennedys for control of the DNC.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.