Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [35]
This is a loyalist’s account of an after-hours escapade that had to have been blatantly illegal. But what’s remarkable is that Jack himself went into the municipal building that night and did what had to be done, putting those petitions in the right pile as if they’d been there by the deadline.
Kennedy pulled off other escapades. Early in the race, a rival candidate, Joe Russo, had run this newspaper ad: “Congress Seat for Sale. No Experience Necessary. Applicant Must Live in New York or Florida. Only Millionaires Need Apply.” The Kennedy campaign didn’t get mad, it got even.
Locating another Joe Russo, they paid him a few bucks to file as a candidate. The effect would be to confuse voters and skim off some of the politician Joe Russo’s votes. There was an Italian vote in the district and, this way, it would be divided.
But there were other sources of resentment. A popular newspaper column authored by a “Dante O’Shaughnessy” mocked Kennedy for being “oh, so British” and for having a valet who looked after him. Tip O’Neill recalled a far more daunting, more relevant advantage. Joe Kennedy had gotten Reader’s Digest to publish a condensed version of the John Hersey PT 109 piece that had run in the New Yorker, and now the campaign was mailing out 100,000 copies of it to voters. Tip couldn’t even remember a candidate before Jack Kennedy who’d had the money to pay for first-class postage.
What you did was rely on campaign workers to deliver literature.
And, even more astoundingly, Joe Kennedy, who’d made money owning chains of movie houses, had gotten local theaters to show a special newsreel recounting the story of Jack’s wartime heroism. No Boston pol, or voter, had ever before seen the like in a local congressional race. Or any race, for that matter.
An important—and brilliant—clincher came just days before the primary: Jack’s father and mother hosted a tony afternoon reception, a formal tea party, at the Hotel Commander in Cambridge. Women from throughout the district were invited, and all were flattered and thrilled. They’d always read about such fancy society events in the papers, but neither they nor anyone they knew had ever been to one.
Kennedy was starting to create what Tip O’Neill called the “Kennedy Party,” one separate from the regular Democratic organizations. He was making it happen by asking citizens who’d never been involved before to come on board. He, the millionaire’s son, was seeking the help of regular folk, not just the predictable party faithful or the machine hacks. Anyone stopping by Kennedy’s storefront headquarters would be asked to volunteer, and, in agreeing, they’d become, on the spot, “Kennedy” people. Thus, as word began to get around that someone’s son or niece was “working for young Jack Kennedy,” the popular appeal of the campaign grew, along with its strength.
Meanwhile, Jack himself continued acting in a way that was deeply impressive for someone of his wealth and name. He was out there going door to door on foot, and it was not simply a choice but rather a necessity. While his rivals could count on their associations with other politicians to further their candidacies, he was a newcomer who, despite his hard-core Boston bloodlines, didn’t have those established connections. His only means of getting to know voters was to meet them himself.
With either Billy Sutton or Dave Powers by his side, he went everywhere. “He met city workers, he met letter carriers, cabbies, waitresses, and dock workers,” Billy recalled. “He was probably the first of the pols around here to go into the firehouses, police stations, post offices, and saloons and poolrooms, as well as the homes, and it was probably the first Jack ever knew that the gas stove and the toilet could be in the same room.” Having the gabby, comical Sutton—a gifted mimic of character high and low—with him provided great company.
He deliberately made the rounds of the Cambridge city councilmen, putting up with their silent responses or sometimes