The Eighth District: A Land of Legends

In the past 50 years, only four men have represented Massachusetts' eighth congressional district, the scraggly block of land that winds its way through the working class, upper class and middle class neighborhoods of Boston and its suburbs.

The men are all legends--from Massachusetts' original James Michael Curley to a young idealist named John F. Kennedy '40, to the shepherd of the Democratic revolution in Congress, Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, to blue-collar standard bearer, Joseph P. Kennedy III.

Since the days of James Michael Curley and ward politics, the district has been its shape and boundaries radically change to the fit the molds of proportional representation.

Today the district makes up approximately one third of Boston and stretches north to five of Boston's bedroom communities--Watertown, Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea and Belmont.

"The district spans the spectrum from very poor people living in some of the poorest neighborhoods with very high degrees of infant morality and joblessness to some of the most affluent neighborhoods in the country, if not the world," says Brian O'Connor, a Kennedy staffer.

Definite Diversity

According to the 1990 Census figures, 601,643 people live in the eighth district.

Nearly 40 percent are minorities. African Americans comprise 23.3 percent of the district, Americans of Hispanic descent 10.6 percent and Asian Americans almost 6 percent.

With these numbers, it's not surprising that the district's voters have long had a certain leftward lean about them.

The district, in the words of author George V. Higgins, "is a reasonably homogeneous fief in which Democratic loyalists constituted just under 41 percent of the voters."

Today, of 56,000 registered voters, nearly 60 percent of Cantabrigians are Democrats compared to the 8 percent who are Republicans.

President Bill Clinton received almost 80 percent of the district's vote in 1992, one of his highest percentages in the nation.

Despite a rise in the incomes of middle class African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and European immigrants, most still work as clerical and service staff in the district's many hospitals, colleges and hotels.

Political Efficacy

Over the past 50 years, the district's distinct voting block has produced an archetypal candidate.

Curley, Kennedy, O'Neill and Kennedy all came from the same urban, Irish-Catholic roots and appealed to the same liberal working class voters.

Boston Globe reporter Michael Kenney '57, notes that the district's demographics do not always translate into political capital.

Melvin H. King, an African-American, who for years was a Beacon Hill representative, threw his hat in the ring in 1986, expecting to capitalize on the minority vote.

Kenney wrote about that election in his book, The Race For the 8th a chronicle of the 1986 congressional election that chose Joseph Kennedy as O'Neill's successor.

King received barely 10 percent of the vote, with Kennedy and his closest rival, George Bachrack, taking significant portions of the minority vote in the Boston areas of the district.

The Kennedy victory came even as working-class voters--his most vociferous supporters--moving away from the district.

As areas of Cambridge and Boston attract more hi-tech companies (particularly in the bio-tech industries), the percentages of blue-collar workers and families as a total percentage in the district have been declining.

When Kenney's book was published, blue collar workers comprised only 14 percent of the district, as compared with nearly 25 percent in 1970.

The dynamic nature of the district's demographics underscores cautions from O'Conner.

"Labels don't do justice to the division of opinion," he says. "You have lunch-pail Democrats, Reagan Democrats who are very liberal on economic issues but tend to be social conservatives."

"And you have probably the most impassioned cadre of foreign affairs activists anywhere in the country," he says.

Part of the reason for that is the presence of Harvard and 59 other colleges and universities within the district.

Visiting student scholars and professors make the eighth "one of the most international of any district in the country," O'Connor said.

With the ethnic diversity, representatives like Joe Kennedy must often make select decisions about which international causes to support.

Bowing to the district's large Haitian constituency, Kennedy led the attempt to restore that nation's exiled president, Jean-Bertrand Aristede, to power in the 1980s, O'Connor said.

"That people will disagree from time to time is obvious," O'Connor said. "But [Joseph Kennedy's] record has been supported by the overwhelming majority of the district."

Indeed, Kennedy has received 100 percent of the vote and usually receives more than 80 percent when he runs for re-election.

A Rich History

Historically, the representative from the eighth district has always had an easy time getting re-elected.

Since 1942, The Globe's Kenney said, only four elections have truly been competitive.

In 1942, former Boston mayor and famous political raconteur James Michael Curley defeated incumbent Thomas Eliot by only 7000 votes.

In 1946, a political war between three powerful political families erupted over the Democratic primary.

The Kennedy family was supporting a young son of theirs, a war veteran named John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Two other families, the Sullivans and the O'Neill's, led at the time by powerful state representative Tip O'Neill, backed Mike Neville, a former Boston mayor.

Neville barely carried Cambridge, but Kennedy won Boston and soundly won a plurality of the primary votes.

When Kennedy relinquished the seat in 1956 to run for the U.S. Senate, O'Neill and Michael LoPresti, a Massachusetts State Senator, squared off in what was then the 11th district of the Commonwealth.

A majority of Boston was included in the district in those days, and LoPresti had expected to carry the city, Kenney said.

O'Neill won Cambridge and Somerville, and with the surprise backing of a prominent Italian-American family, split Boston with LoPresti.

He won the primary by fewer than 3,000 votes.

For the next 34 years, O'Neill dominated the district's--and eventually the nation's--political agenda.

O'Neill's tenure in the office saw the district weather the civil rights movement, the expansion of national social programs, the extension of urban sprawl, the Vietnam War and increasing gentrification in Cambridge.

Even with widespread socio-economic and ethnic diversity, some residents said they felt no observable racial tensions in the district during the turbulent 1960s.

Cambridge resident Rita Corkery, who has lived in the district since 1954 and was a long-time liaison between Harvard and the city, said the area weathered the struggle for civil rights with little wear and tear.

"I think people got along very well," she said. "I never felt that there was any racial tensions."

Cambridge Mayor Francis H. Duehay '55, who "flirted" with the idea of running for the seat in 1986, remembers a different district.

Disputes over curriculum in the area's already progressive school systems created division within the district during the civil rights era.

The University itself further exacerbated racial tensions when it tried to expand into predominantly minority areas of Cambridge and Allston, Duehay says.

Duehay points to activist Sondra Graham's disruption of the Harvard commencement in 1971 as a perfect example of such underlying racial tension.

Still, in the late 1960s, as a glut of federal money began pouring in to build low-income housing, the district dealt with the tensions of the civil rights era better than most others.

Parts of the district avoided problems by eschewing mandatory busing, a flashpoint issue for other communities.

"There was never a school integration fight," Kenney said. "People were able to pick schools."

Although O'Neill returned to the district every weekend before he became speaker, some observers say he ironically refused to entangle himself in local politics.

Still, O'Neill had an intense, old-school personal charm.

"I would drop by his office...and he would keep everybody waiting and greet local constituents," Duehay recalls.

"He had a very unusual quality in that when you spoke to him, you would think the only thing he had on his mind was his conversation with you," the new mayor says.

In Washington, O'Neill became extremely popular with his colleagues on both sides of the House chamber.

O'Neill was the consummate deal maker, brokering compromises on tough issues within his own party. And O'Neill was not afraid to express his opinions, even when they split the district.

In 1967, Kenney says, O'Neill became the first Democrat to oppose the Vietnam War.

The academics and the more affluent members of the district were also opposed to the war at the time. The Globe, Kenney recalls, published weekly lists of soldiers who died or were missing in action.

But the majority of the district--blue collar families, whose wage-earners worked in service and industrial sectors--were strongly in favor of the war.

Rita Corkery remembers O'Neill being vocally criticized by residents of the district--which she says was surprising for the usually unified eighth.

"It was sort of a feeling of people saying, `it's against your country,'" Corkery said. "He did show leadership in going against that."

O'Neill was elected Speaker of the House in 1977 and quickly became one of the most enigmatic figures in American politics.

Thomas J. Vallely, a Massachusetts state legislator who sought O'Neill's seat in 1986, attributes the former speaker's political dominance simply to his character and stature as an American statesman.

Vallely, now an administrator at the Harvard Institute for International Development, said O'Neill became the spokesperson for the post-World War II Democratic majority in Congress.

Then came Ronald W. Reagan. The eighth district gave Reagan 36 percent of its vote, the lowest of any district in the nation.

"And, [then O'Neill] governed over the adjustment of the [Great Society]," Vallely says.

Throughout the Reagan years, O'Neill kept a close liberal eye on the conservative reforms backed by his fellow Irishman.

In his district, O'Neill was so popular he often galloped through election years without so much as a primary challenger.

"People respected him as a person and a political figure," Vallely said.

His political clout did not hurt his image. O'Neill's influence helped bring the district money for depressing Boston's central artery--a massive public works project that locals have dubbed "Tip O'Neill's Going Away Present."

The Weight of the Eighth

By 1986, the people of the district were used to having somebody who could throw their weight around in Washington.

In previous decades, Harvard academics (including Winthrop Professor of History Stephan A. Thernstrom) and prominent district residents toyed with the idea of running against O'Neill for the seat, but, upon sober reflection, most bowed out.

Vallely flirted with the idea of running for the seat when O'Neill announced his retirement.

A "conservative democrat" who had amassed a solidly liberal voting record on Beacon Hill, Vallely was widely expected to spend more money than any other candidate. When Joseph P. Kennedy III., decided to enter the race, "I grew an understanding of reality," Vallely said.

But Vallely says he decided the Kennedy name would be too much to overcome.

"The Kennedys are a talented political family in the sense that they do understand people's concerns," he says.

"Regardless of how much they get beaten up, people are under the impression that they are on their side," he says. Vallely then swung his support to Kennedy.

Although Kennedy had little political experience, he quickly learned the political game, endearing himself to the academic gliteratti of the district.

When then Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrahms threatened to cancel a planned speech at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government because the school had invited Robert White, a liberal former U.S. ambassador to El Savador to balance the panel, Kennedy publicly threw his support behind White.

White, wrote Kenney, "was respected and admired in the Cambridge academic-liberal community, and now Joe Kennedy had emerged as his protector and ally."

To many voters in the eighth district, Kenney concludes, this display of power was reminiscent of Tip O'Neill's personal political power.

Bachrack was a former state senator who, in contrast to Kennedy, had a political base but no a powerful name.

Today he insists he truly believed he could beat Kennedy.

"I wouldn't have run if I didn't think I could win," he said.

O'Neill, to the amusement of some, endorsed Kennedy, the outsider.

"There wasn't any empirical evidence that the goodwill extended towards [Jack] Kennedy extended to the next generation," Bachrack said. "Clearly, we now know it does."

Although tarnished by scandal, the Kennedy name plays big here as do the hot-button issues of the day to the liberal activist community.

Harvard students, however, rarely vote in the district, preferring instead to cast ballots in their home states and localities.

Undoubtedly, they are influenced by the eighth.

Their participation patterns seem to follow a maxim coined by an eighth native: all politics are local.