Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [58]
To enforce this, Bobby Kennedy repeatedly made it clear to one and all that there were to be no paid campaign workers. No exceptions. One local political veteran who’d supported Jack’s campaign in ’46 would learn the hard way that the campaign manager this time around wasn’t about to be messed with. Here’s Ken O’Donnell’s account of what happened when that fellow failed to take the hint:
“ ‘How much money is the candidate going to give us to spend in our district?’ this guy called out at a meeting. When Bob Kennedy ignored him and kept to the order of business, the man then stood up and cut Bobby off. ‘Listen, kid, we’ve been around a long time, we know politics. You’re wet behind the ears and you’d be better off in Washington than here, where you don’t know what you are doing. You’ve got to pay these people; you want campaign people out working for you, you got to pay them, and you can afford it. The Kennedys are rich.’ Bobby just stared at him. Then he got up, grabbed him by his collar, and showed him the door—and, as he was throwing him out in the street, he told him, ‘Would you mind getting lost . . . and keeping yourself lost.’ “
When the troublemaker appealed his case to Jack, Bobby didn’t like it one bit. “Look, you get one guy like that crying, then you have to pay him and his volunteers to work. Then other people hear about it, and then they want to be paid to volunteer, and then we’ll end up spending a million dollars in Boston alone. I’m not going to have him around. You asked me to run this campaign. I didn’t want to, but now I’m here, so I will run it my way.”
Jack was actually tougher than his younger brother. When Governor Dever began to worry that he was going to lose his race and saw Kennedy gaining strength, he offered to combine forces. Joseph Kennedy liked the idea; O’Brien and O’Donnell didn’t. Jack agreed with his people, refusing to be Dever’s life preserver. He gave Bobby the job of delivering the decision to his father and Dever both. “Don’t give in to them, but don’t get me involved with it,” were the instructions. The older brother was becoming a hard-nosed, un-sentimental politician. Bobby’s role was to play the part of one.
From the beginning, the teas that started it all proved to be an excellent recruiting platform. As O’Donnell was to explain, “Nobody went to one who didn’t fill out a card. We had them in every community, and . . . they allowed our organization to get going and to get our secretary in action.” They became competitive events. “When Lowell had four thousand, Lawrence had to have five thousand. So the secretary had a great incentive.”
Hugh Fraser, one of Jack’s British friends visiting at the time, was impressed by the novelty of these occasions, referring to them as “shenanigans.”
“The ‘tea party’ technique amazed me,” said Fraser, who’d never seen anything of its kind.
Anyone who organized a tea was required to provide a quota of signatures for Kennedy’s nomination papers. Only 2,500 signatures statewide were required for a candidate in the Senate primary, but Dave Powers and Larry O’Brien had decided that they’d ask the regional organizers to produce a grand total of 250,000. The reason, according to O’Donnell, was not just “psychological”; it was also a way to have a quarter-million voters not only committed but actively participating in the early stages, before the real fight started up in the general election campaign. Too, it was a gauge to help them figure how the organizers were performing and which ones were particularly effective.
The teas were aimed at winning the hearts of the working class, and also as a means of identifying and organizing the Democratic voter base. But equally crucial was the need to go after those Irish and other traditional Democratic voters who’d drifted away and might very likely stay drifted with the popular Ike as the Republican candidate.
It had been customary for statewide Democratic candidates in Massachusetts to expend their major effort in the