Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage (30 page)

There is one last point I cannot forbear mentioning. When the former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration complains that the Democrats’ policies have been insufficiently liberal, I am reminded of the statement Oscar Levant made about Doris Day: “I knew her before she was a virgin.” On the other hand, while Reich’s description of my voice was unkind, I cannot claim it is inaccurate—I long ago realized that it would be unwise for me to try to make anonymous phone calls.

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When the 1996 election essentially preserved the status quo—a second term for Clinton and a continued House Republican majority, though a smaller one—I entered a period of self-reflection. I had decided earlier that I would retire when I was seventy-five. I had seen too many representatives enjoy great congressional careers and then stay too long. Once figures of respect, they became objects of pity, and in some cases derision. I was approaching the midpoint of my career. What could I hope to accomplish?

Following the Republican victories of 1994, I had spent two years reacting to their initiatives. But in 1996, I believed—correctly—that they had been sufficiently chastened by their political and legislative difficulties to scale back the scope of their plans. As a result, I would be more able to decide where to focus my energies. Of course, this was a trade-off I would prefer to have avoided. I was gaining more freedom to choose the issues I would concentrate on, yet I was not gaining more ability to act on them.

My strategic-planning process began with an assessment of the state of public opinion on economic inequality, LGBT legal equality, and myself. I acknowledge that one of these things is not like the others. But a clear understanding of my personal appeal, both in the district I represented and in the broader political context, was a prerequisite for deciding what steps I could take to advance my substantive goals.

I prided myself on being much less easily intimidated electorally than most of my colleagues, but I enjoyed the job too much to be suicidal. My attitude toward electoral risk at the time was an adaptation of the old saying, “I may be courageous, but I’m not stupid.” Since I expected to spend less time legislating and more time trying to influence the national debate, it was important to be clearheaded about the mix of credibility and liability I brought to such public work. The more I enjoyed of the former, and the less I suffered from the latter, the greater my influence would be on my colleagues and on the important sectors of public opinion I wanted to sway.

The conclusions I came to are easily summarized. LGBT issues and I were doing better than I had expected. But support for the battle against economic inequality was lagging badly.

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Fortunately, my district remained a source of confidence for me, even though its borders had shifted yet again a few years before. In 1992, following the 1990 census, Massachusetts Senate president William Bulger asked if I would agree to add half the town of Easton to my new district. This was for the convenience of my colleague Joe Moakley, who was disturbed that a resident of that town intended to run against him. Joe did not fear losing, but he believed that after thirty years of public service, he was entitled to enjoy a summer on Cape Cod without the annoyance of an opponent.

Those following this narrative closely will note the contrast between Bulger’s solicitude in 1992 and his vindictive effort to redistrict me back into private life in 1982. In other jurisdictions, the fact that ten years had passed might have been a sufficient explanation for this new cooperative attitude. But not in Massachusetts. I had learned early in my career that many of the state’s politicians took pride in their definition of Irish Alzheimer’s—“the disease in which you forget everything but your grudges.” (Indeed, I would see the idea illustrated vividly at Joe Moakley’s wake in 2001. One of my colleagues brought a retired congressman to the event. A younger former member came up to them and expressed his pleasure at meeting the older member again after many years. The latter responded effusively, “It’s great to see you too, pal. How’ve you been?” When the younger man walked away, the older man asked his friend, “Who was that guy?” When he was told, he exploded, “That’s who that was? I hate that son of a bitch!”)

As it turned out, I didn’t need the passage of time to heal my relationship with Bulger. I had my mother. After her star turn in my 1982 TV commercial, she had become the most influential advocate for elderly needs in the state. She also lived in Bulger’s Senate district, and they bonded. My mother got the best possible ally for the legislation she supported. Bulger got enthusiastic praise from a woman who was well-known statewide and among the more prominent residents of the most liberal part of his Senate district, which was where he was weakest. Their marriage of convenience bloomed into a strong friendship—they were both highly intelligent, committed to improving the lives of the elderly and, not incidentally, great believers in the importance of family ties. In other words, my mommy made the bullies stop picking on me. (My siblings and I honored their relationship in 2005 when we asked Bulger to speak at her memorial service.)

When Bulger asked me to accommodate Moakley’s request, I responded too flippantly. I said that as long as Newton, Brookline, and Fall River remained in my district, they could add Utah and I would be okay. When my words became public, I had wisecracker’s remorse. As it turned out, my newly drawn district was not what I’d hoped for: It would contain only half of my beloved Fall River, and none of the adjacent towns that I had assumed would be part of the package. Instead I would now be running in New Bedford and its adjacent towns—meaning I would be seeking the vote of hundreds of thousands of people I had never previously represented, some of whom probably knew me primarily because of the unhappy events of 1989–1990. But the new district, it turned out, was as good for me as the previous one—so no harm was done by my mouthing off.

After I’d defeated Heckler in 1982, I’d had the good fortune to draw ineffective opponents. In 1986, for example, I faced only an Independent. An adherent of the fringe conspiracy theorist and perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, he claimed, among other things, that Queen Elizabeth was a drug dealer. My only comment of note in that race was that I didn’t think she was, because she didn’t dress nearly well enough. In 1992, however, with my scandal still a recent memory, and a district that was 50 percent unfamiliar, I did draw a serious Republican challenger—a responsible, articulate lawyer who was a town selectman. Despite his endorsement by the
New Bedford Standard-Times
—which oddly explained that they were certain that Clinton would be elected and I would join the cabinet—the voters in the New Bedford area were as supportive as their Fall River neighbors had been, and I won by a comfortable margin. For reasons I do not understand, but for which I am grateful, no Republican filed for the seat in 1994. Perhaps regretting that they had not taken advantage of their landslide that year, the Republicans backed another very plausible candidate in 1996. But by this time, I had become solidly entrenched in the New Bedford area and again won by a large margin. This was to be the last time I had an opponent of any substance until 2010.

The absence of serious opposition meant, to my great pleasure, that I didn’t need to engage in serious fund-raising. For most of my career, I was able to raise much of what I needed simply by sending letters to a well-established contributor list that I had built up. I did hold some fund-raisers in Washington, and I received support from several PACs. These PACs generally represented labor groups, gay rights organizations, or institutions interested in the construction of low-income housing, so I never felt guilty or at all corrupted by my association with any of them.

I tried to make fund-raising as enjoyable as possible by writing solicitation letters that I hoped were funny, and that I knew were at least whimsical. Knowing how many people were tired of semihysterical demands for immediate financial assistance lest disaster ensue, I once sent out a letter that said: “Dear Friend. Please send me money.” It turned out to perform about as well as more elaborate requests.

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Among my new district’s distinguishing characteristics was that it had more residents of Portuguese heritage than any other legislative district in the world. (Of course, parliamentary districts in Portugal had a higher percentage of Portuguese people, but because those districts were very small, I represented a greater number.) These voters mainly hailed from the Azores, a chain of Atlantic islands one thousand miles from Portugal. When I first arrived in Fall River in 1982, I knew of the territory only from a line in a famous poem about Columbus—“behind him lay the gray Azores.” Given the choice of traveling one thousand miles east to their home country, or two thousand miles west to America, hundreds of thousands over the years chose us. Like most immigrants, they were entrepreneurially minded, leaving home to better their economic position.

Portuguese Americans did not have a large number of politicians dedicated to their concerns. And they had a number of issues. With my Rhode Island colleague, Patrick Kennedy, I successfully won Portugal’s inclusion in a visa waiver program for European nations. Reflecting the unusual ethnic composition of my district, and my general focus on domestic affairs, my visits to Israel and the Azores would outnumber all of my trips to other countries combined.

I worked especially hard to serve my new constituents in New Bedford. Like Fall River, it was a blue-collar fishing and manufacturing center that had a large Portuguese American population and had seen better days. To my considerable gratification, I began a twenty-year alliance with the fishing community. I fought to change the government’s arbitrary, unreliable, and unfair enforcement of the rules against catching immature scallops—known inelegantly as “the meat count.” More important, I pressured Secretary of Commerce William Daley to allow an increase in the scallop quota—an increase that was clearly justified by the science but angrily fought by the Conservation Law Foundation. This was not my first difference with the CLF, an organization I found to be rigid and openly contemptuous of any citizens who dared disagree with them. After Daley agreed to our recommendation, New Bedford became the country’s leading scallop source and, contrary to the CLF’s claims, scallops remained abundant in the ocean. I consider myself a committed supporter of protecting the environment. But my experience in southeastern Massachusetts left me severely disappointed with environmentalists who scorn anyone who would take other concerns into consideration.

I also worked with Ted Kennedy to establish the national park on the New Bedford waterfront that honors the history of the whaling industry. I was especially proud to see this park bestowed on a very Democratic area—and two outspoken liberal Democrats—by the Republican-controlled Congress at a time when there was strong resistance to the creation of new national parks due to budgetary constraints. It was an important legislative achievement, and an example of how Senator Kennedy and I were able to wage vigorous partisan battles on major ideological issues while preserving our ability to work with Republicans on less controversial matters. Kennedy drew on his friendship with Alaska Republican Ted Stevens to make a deal in the Senate, packaging the New Bedford park with some recognition for Alaska’s whaling history. In the House, I worked closely with Massachusetts Republican Peter Blute, who had upset the Democratic incumbent Joe Early in 1992. Blute represented the town of Dartmouth, which was next to New Bedford, and many of his constituents were leaders in the drive for the park. Blute lost his seat in 1996, and no Massachusetts Republican has won a House election since.

Two buildings in the park are described by Herman Melville in the opening pages of
Moby-Dick.
There may be other ones as well. Now that I have retired, I can confess that I found the bulk of the book unreadable, although I did participate in public readings of it every year at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in the heart of the park. Fortunately, my part always came in the first half hour of the twenty-five-hour marathon.

My greatest hope for New Bedford and Fall River was to establish a rail connection between the two working-class cities and Boston. No matter how successfully we promoted employment in the southeastern part of the state, the greater Boston area would still be the place with more opportunity. This was made especially clear to me in 2005 when a group of Boston hotel owners told me that they were suffering from a shortage of workers. It was one of the rare times when I had what I thought was a perfect solution. I noted that there was a great pool of labor in the Fall River and New Bedford areas—people with a great work ethic, many of whom would be glad to take the jobs if they had an efficient, stable way to reach them. “Help us build a commuter rail from there to Boston,” I said, “and it will be highly mutually beneficial.”

The project was officially supported by the Massachusetts state government. But there were two obstacles. As always, one was money, and so I had another reason to press for increasing government revenue. To my shock, a determined group of environmentalists put up a strong fight against the rail line, and even though they were ultimately overruled by the relevant officials—after inflicting significant delays—the threat of their lawsuit still hangs over us. Their objection was that the rails would pass through a swamp, and they rejected any means of mitigation.

This dispute left me convinced that some amendment to environmental laws regarding wetlands and endangered species is necessary. It is important to note that the main victims of the environmental veto over much important economic activity are white working-class men, further embittering them toward liberals and increasing their frustration with government.

*

Since social liberalism was strongest on the East and West Coasts, I was often asked to campaign for other candidates within ten miles of an ocean. As I got invitations to Iowa, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and elsewhere in the interior, I became confident of two political facts: My colleagues believed they’d benefit if their LGBT constituents saw me with them, and they did not worry that the association would hurt them with other voters.