Authors: J. Anthony Lukas
That summer of 1956, Joe White was caught in the most ill-conceived venture of his career. For years he’d supported Suffolk County Sheriff Fred Sullivan, who, in turn, plied him with patronage. But when the two had a bitter falling-out, some of those whom Joe had placed as court officers feared that they would lose their jobs and urged him to run for sheriff himself. Against his better judgment, Joe acceded. By the time Kevin returned from his honeymoon, his father was headed for a debacle. Determined to spare him that humiliation, Kevin and Terry worked around the clock to pump life into the moribund campaign.
In those days, all Boston newspapers ran political ads on the front page, often piling them one upon another. The brothers waited until the last moment, then descended on the newspaper office with a new ad, which would be stacked above the rest, pushing it into the enviable position “above the fold.” Meanwhile, Mother Galvin mobilized his strength in the “lower wards.” The campaign came alive. In late summer, the White boys asked Galvin to assess their prospects. “You’ll always know if you’re going to lose,” the old campaigner noted. “You’ll be able to smell defeat.”
The Saturday before the Democratic primary, the brothers were crossing the Boston Common when Kevin asked, “You smell anything?”
“Yes,” Terry said, “I do.”
The next Tuesday, Joe carried Boston but lost the county’s outlying reaches, falling 1,000 votes short of the nomination. But his sons had survived their baptism by fire.
Through the late fifties, Kevin White watched another Boston Irishman move to the very doorstep of the White House. Not surprisingly, Jack Kennedy had a profound influence on the young assistant DA. To a young man in White’s position, Jack Kennedy’s cool diffidence seemed the standard by which to measure himself. When Honey Fitz’s grandson declined to kiss babies or try on Indian headdresses, Mother Galvin’s son-in-law nodded in instant recognition. For JFK’s example merely reinforced the lesson Kevin had absorbed at his mother’s knee: not for him the boozy bonhomie of the traditional Boston pol; rather, the dignified mien of the public servant. It was perhaps not entirely coincidental that when Kevin White left his father’s West Roxbury base for Beacon Hill in 1956, he settled in the very apartment block where Jack Kennedy had established his voting address a decade before, and that when he opened the law office of Cameron & White that fall, it was in the building which had harbored Kennedy’s first campaign headquarters.
By early 1960, as Jack Kennedy’s advanced on the presidency, Kevin White joined a band of Yankee and Jewish liberals intent on bringing the spirit of the era to Boston’s heartland. For years, the Ward Five Democratic Committee,
representing Beacon Hill and the Back Bay, had been controlled by a veteran named Charlie McGlue. Now Beacon Hill attorney Carl Sapers, assembling a reform slate, thought Kevin would add ethnic balance. Backed by a cadre of energetic young gentry, the ticket swept to a decisive victory.
While politics was becoming Kevin’s vocation, it remained an avocation for Terry, who had married at eighteen, quickly fathered five children, and required a substantial income. In 1955, he founded a company which took advantage of his political connections as well as his name. White Lines, Inc., did just what its title suggested: it painted white lines down the center of streets. Soon his firm had won contracts in Boston and many other New England cities. The business minted money, leaving Terry plenty of time for his favorite hobby, politics. To many, his seemed the best political mind in the family.
After Kevin was elected to the Ward Five Committee, Terry spotted an unusual opportunity. A veteran pol named Joe Ward, then serving as Massachusetts Secretary of State, was running for governor, leaving the Secretary of State’s job up for grabs. So far the race had drawn a lackluster field and Terry believed Kevin could make a good showing. But he had to sell the idea. Patricia was dead set against it. She’d never wanted her father or husband in politics, and she certainly didn’t want that life for Kevin, whom she regarded as too refined for the hustings. Joe White didn’t think his eldest son was up to it. But Terry persuaded them both. Then he and his father went to work on Kevin, who was particularly reluctant when he discovered that he’d have to resign his $5,000-a-year job in the DA’s office. At length Terry convinced him, promising to help bankroll his campaign.
Once Joe White had enlisted in the campaign, he was in it all the way, but he still couldn’t communicate with Kevin, so Terry was the conduit between them.
Behind the scenes, Joe and Terry sought to clear Kevin’s path. A few days before the convention, they called on State Senate President Johnny Powers, a tough-talking pol from South Boston who would share the convention chair. A spokesman for the city’s “lower wards,” Powers wasn’t the Whites’ kind of guy and Patricia had been aghast the previous year when Joe supported him for mayor. In return, Powers had promised that if elected he would appoint Kevin City Treasurer. But he’d lost the mayoral race and now the Whites were there to claim a different return on their investment.
Cornering Powers outside the Senate chamber, Joe reminded him that Kevin was running for Secretary of State. “Can you give him a little help?” he asked.
“Well, sure,” said Powers, “but I don’t know what I can do. He has to prove himself.”
At that, Terry moved in. “Suppose Kevin could finish second on an early ballot? Could we count on you then?”
“Of course,” said Powers, clearly annoyed at being pressed so hard.
On June 19, the balloting began at the Boston Arena, an ancient hockey
and wrestling emporium. The superannuated structure had no air conditioning and temperatures hovered in the nineties. It took nearly twelve hours to nominate the top of the ticket, so the balloting for Secretary of State didn’t begin until 9 p.m.
All evening, Joe White and Mother Galvin prowled the floor, calling in chits from a combined sixty-five years in politics. As the voting began, Joe went to work on John Regan, a power in Joe’s own West Roxbury, but Regan was pledged to the front-runner, Francis X. Ahearn Finally, Joe stationed himself in front of the West Roxbury delegation and stared directly at Regan, who did everything to avoid his eye. When he did look up, he saw Joe still there, silently mouthing, “My boy, John. My boy.”
West Roxbury went for Kevin White, as did a surprising number of other delegates. Although Ahearn headed the first ballot with 432 votes, Kevin was second with 352, narrowly edging out Governor’s Councilor Edward J. Cronin. In an office beneath the stands, the gubernatorial nominee Joe Ward and his powerful ally, House Speaker John “Iron Duke” Thompson, watched the tally, debating where to throw their strength. After the first ballot, Owen Brock, one of Ward’s campaign managers and a cousin of Joe White’s, urged them to support Kevin, arguing that Joe and Mother Galvin would be valuable assets in the campaign. When Thompson and Ward concurred, they summoned their supporters—already celebrating at the hotels—to vote for Kevin White.
Frank Ahearn and Eddie Cronin knew that their only hope of survival was an adjournment until morning. There were legitimate arguments for one—the convention had been in session for thirteen straight hours and the heat was so oppressive that one Lynn delegate had been rushed to the hospital. So many delegates had left the floor that delegation chairmen now stood alone by their microphones, casting hundreds of absentee votes—a practice permitted so long as no delegate demanded a poll of those present.
Toward 11 p.m., rumors swept the floor that Cronin was about to address the convention to throw his votes to Ahearn or demand adjournment. Terry White rushed to the podium, telling Johnny Powers, “Now’s the time. We need you!” When Cronin approached, Powers refused to let him speak.
On the second ballot, Kevin White jumped ahead with 481 votes to Ahearn’s 339 and Cronin’s 293. Ahearn was desperate now. Standing on a chair, he complained loudly that he was being “jobbed.” Pounding his gavel, Powers noted that only a delegate could challenge a count. Ahearn’s supporters howled with rage. Fistfights broke out on the floor. Fearing that a riot might force an adjournment after all, Joe White dashed to the podium, gesturing frantically for his people to calm down. But Ahearn’s forces kept up their clamor until Powers ordered uniformed police to clear the floor of all nondelegates. At 11:25 p.m.—with police standing guard in the aisles—Powers proclaimed Kevin White the winner on the third ballot.
The young candidate was so unknown that fall that Jack Kennedy introduced him to a rally as “Calvin Witt.” But White went on to beat another
promising newcorner, Republican Ed Brooke, and didn’t relinquish the Secretary’s office for seven years. The responsibilities were hardly onerous—his bailiwick included the State Archives, State Elections, Vital Statistics, Public Documents, Trademarks, and Notaries Public. His principal accomplishment was sponsorship of the Corrupt Practices Act, requiring that all candidates for statewide office disclose their campaign contributions and expenditures. The second such law in the nation, it drew wide attention, launching Kevin’s reputation as a progressive. Compared to later legislation, the statute was shot with loopholes, but it almost provoked a blowout with the Kennedy clan.
By autumn 1962, White had already declared limited independence from the Kennedys. When Ted announced that spring for his brother’s old Senate seat, Kevin endorsed his opponent, Eddie McCormack. He did that in part out of gratitude to Eddie’s uncle, the former Speaker, who had done Kevin’s ailing father a crucial favor; in part because he harbored some personal animosity toward Ted (once when Ted was busy he asked Kevin to take his wife to a reception, prompting Kevin to ask indignantly, “What does he think I am? A driver?”). White respected Jack Kennedy, but he resented the way the First Family threw its weight around in Massachusetts politics, handpicking “Chub” Peabody as governor, reserving the senatorial plum for Ted. Perhaps because he owed his advancement so heavily to his own father, Kevin was particularly sensitive to the nepotism issue. Barely a year older than Ted, he regarded him as direct competition; he was damned if he’d climb on the Kennedy bandwagon.
Even without White’s endorsement, Ted won handily. A few days after the election, an underling in the Secretary’s office showed his boss clear discrepancies in Ted’s campaign finance report. Since that was the first year candidates had been required to file under the new law, many reports contained such errors, but Kevin jumped at the chance to embarrass the Senator-elect, ordering his staff to prepare a news conference. Only when Terry White warned that challenging the brother of a sitting President was sure political suicide did Kevin reluctantly cancel the announcement.
It isn’t clear how much Ted knew about these events, but White’s relations with the Kennedys were strained from then on (one aide remembers Ted nervously disposing of cigarette ashes in his cuff rather than ask White for an ashtray). The roots of the McGovern imbroglio were sunk deep in their mutual suspicions.
The office of Secretary of State offers its incumbent one striking opportunity. Since all town clerks report to him, the Secretary has ample reason to stay in touch with these influential politicos. Early in his first term, White pledged to visit each of the Commonwealth’s 351 towns and cities. Relentlessly over the next few years, he and general counsel Dick Dray climbed into Dray’s red Mustang and headed off for some remote community. In May 1964, he flew by seaplane into Gosnold, a tiny island village in Buzzards Bay, dramatically completing the tour.
After he was reelected with the largest plurality ever received by a statewide
Democratic candidate, his thoughts turned to the governorship, but his advisers were sharply divided on the best route, so in May 1966 White convened his brain trust at the airport motel. Associates like Dick Dray and Jackie Mulhern urged that he run first for mayor of Boston, but Kevin was repelled by the grubby minutiae of city government as well as by his father’s brand of urban politics (no longer much of an influence, Joe White had suffered a stroke and would die the following year). Preferring the loftier realm of state government, Kevin wanted to run for Attorney General. Terry concurred. But to seek a new state position Kevin would have to sacrifice his old one and, if he lost, he would be out of office altogether. Abandoning that notion, he announced for a fourth term as Secretary of State.
Jackie Mulhern, one of Kevin’s oldest friends, continued to brood about the mayoral race. The city was the quintessential arena of the sixties, he concluded, the laboratory in which an ambitious politician could make his mark. One day in November 1966, he invited Terry White out to Newton’s Woodland Golf Club and made his argument in detail. After four hours, Terry summoned Kevin. Over dinner in the club’s dining room, his brother and his old friend persuaded Kevin to run for mayor.
Terry signed on as campaign manager and all through that winter he shrewdly orchestrated a public relations effort to frighten Mayor John Collins out of the race. Full-page ads gave the false impression that White was lushly financed; friendly columnists suggested that powerful forces were coalescing behind him. In mid-spring Collins dropped out, throwing his support to Redevelopment Director Ed Logue, a nationally known figure with impeccable liberal credentials and influential friends in the media, among them Tom Winship. Although the
Globe
was still bound by its self-imposed prohibition on political endorsements, Winship did little that summer to disguise his enthusiasm for Logue.
When White proved stronger than anticipated, the Collins-Logue forces landed what looked at first like a knockout blow. A challenger turned up enough errors in White’s nominating papers to threaten a disqualification. Fighting for his survival, Kevin charged that Logue was behind the challenge; intent on preserving his “non-political” image, Logue disclaimed any role in the matter. Meanwhile, Terry White led an espionage operation designed to prove his brother’s claim. The challenge had been filed by one Richard Iantosca, a name utterly unknown in Boston politics, and the mystery deepened when Iantosca disappeared from home and job. But White’s amateur sleuths ransacked barrooms and staked out hotels, eventually locating the intermediary between Logue and Iantosca. His disclaimers now discredited, Logue withdrew the challenge, and several weeks later finished fourth in the preliminary, setting the stage for a runoff between Kevin White and Louise Day Hicks.