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Hosting Dems in 2004 will boost Boston's political profile, says CGS profM
By David J. Craig
From James Michael Curley to the Kennedys to Tip O’Neill, Boston has been synonymous with the Democratic Party. The region has graduated hometown pols to the national scene with regularity, and as the cradle of the American Revolution it enjoys mythic status in this country. However, Boston has never hosted a Democratic National Convention. So how did the city attract the 2004 convention?
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| Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (Hon.’01), shown here celebrating the November 13 announcement that Boston will host the 2004 Democratic National Convention, will reflect well on the city during the convention because he comes across “as a real person,” says CGS Assistant Professor Thomas J. Whalen. Moreover, Whalen says, the convention could remake the city’s reputation nationally by showing that it has outgrown its past of political corruption and racial tension. Photo by Reuters/Jim Bourg |
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“The party followed the money,” says Thomas J. Whalen, a
CGS assistant professor of social science, who specializes in modern American
politics and history. “Massachusetts has always been a great place
to raise funds for national campaigns, and I think Senator Ted Kennedy
pulled out all the stops to bring the convention here this time. Also,
the Democratic establishment probably thought it owed it to Ted for all
of his service to the party. Getting the convention for Boston could be
one of his last hurrahs, his final legacy to the state.”
And an important legacy it could be. The region will reap important political
dividends for having hosted the convention, Whalen says, long after the
ticker tape and balloons are swept off the FleetCenter floor and local
businesses have rung up an estimated $150 million windfall. (Boston University
contributed to the city’s proposal to the Democratic National Committee
by promising housing space for up to 1,600 visitors, depending on exactly
when in the summer of 2004 the convention will be held.)
“Massachusetts politics is now considered a backwater to the national
scene at the congressional level compared to the days of Tip O’Neill,
and the convention will bring an incredible amount of exposure to our
congressmen and other local politicians,” Whalen says. “It
certainly won’t hurt Senator John Kerry if he is the party’s
nominee.
“And if the Democratic Party is going to move more toward the political
center in 2004, as I assume it will, the convention will be an opportunity
to show that Massachusetts isn’t the woolly liberal bastion it’s
been seen as, but that it is part of America,” he continues. “The
Democratic Party also will want to show that it is inclusive, and that
will be good for Boston because it will be presented to the country as
largely nonwhite, and as having moved beyond its past of parochialism.
That’s a nice symbolic image for the city as we move into the 21st
century.”
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (Hon.’01), who raised corporate gifts
to support the 2004 convention and was instrumental in building the Massachusetts
coalition that sold the city to the Democratic National Committee, will
reflect well on the city of Boston during the convention by “just
being himself,” says Whalen. “The mayor comes across as a
real person, and I think that could work in the city’s favor.”
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| Thomas J. Whalen Photo by Kalman Zabarsky | |
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So why has the Hub never before hosted a national political convention?
Boston has traditionally been an unattractive location for a convention
because of its legacy of political corruption and racial intolerance,
Whalen says, and ironically, because Massachusetts as a whole is perceived
as a bulwark of liberalism.
“We hear a lot about Boston’s rich political tradition, but
through the first half of the 20th century the national Democratic Party
actually wanted to distance itself from the people who had political clout
here,” says Whalen, the author of Kennedy versus Lodge: The 1952
Massachusetts Senate Race (Northeastern University Press, 2000). He currently
is writing a book about how black Boston Cel-tics players were treated
in the city during the 1960s. “Someone like former Boston Mayor
and Massachusetts Governor James Michael Curly embodied the corruption,
over-the-top glad-handing, and old Irish machine politics that the party
found embarrassing,” he says. “Franklin Roosevelt certainly
wanted nothing to do with that.”
Local politicians cleaned up their image in the second half of the century,
Whalen says, but by then Massachusetts, once a blue-collar industrial
state, had become a liberal Democratic lock, which hurt its pull in national
elections. “You really want to have a convention in a swing state,
and after 1950, that kind of power shifted away from the Northeast to
the South and the Sunbelt,” he says. “Massachusetts is still
perceived as very liberal, although I think the recent gubernatorial election
shows that that’s not really true.”
And then there was the busing crisis of the 1970s. “That really
tainted Boston’s image,” says Whalen. “The whole country
saw the images of rocks being thrown at school buses, and the effects
of that have lingered. But the convention will show that Boston has arrived,
and that it now is on board with the rest of the country.”
22 November 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations