The Dems really make it difficult to admit that one is from Massachusetts - Kennedy (any one of them; take your pick), John Forbes Kerry, Michael Dukakis, Gerry Studds, Barney Frank, etc. Thank God I escaped over the border to NH ten years ago. Despite being a Boston Irish kid that grew up in a Democrat union household, I have been a conservative since college. My father, an Irish immigrant, voted the Democratic ticket and was a strong union guy, until the Carter administration when he watched an incompetent president do nothing while inflation ate away at his savings. Pops like the Reagan message of self-sufficiency, less government, and optimism. He voted Republican from 1980 onward. I graduated from engineering school and then got my MBA at Harvard. From the farm in Galway to Harvard Business School in one generation... And, unlike Ted Kennedy, I took my own tests...
So have I. My story is similar to yours. My dad was an Italian immigrant who became a naturalized citizen. He was a blue collar worker all his life. He was a member of the machinists union and voted Democrat until late in life. I never was a Dem.