her job at the State House, and telling her he’d dipped into their rent money to buy bumper stickers. He looked chagrined, he recalled, and she smiled and offered to buy him some fried clams.
One of his most formidable opponents was Gerry O’Leary, a high school football hero who would later go to prison for an attempted $650,000 shakedown of a school bus company in 1980 while he was serving on the Boston School Committee. Another tough foe was James Collins Jr., son of a well-heeled bookmaker who would later move out of Boston and be elected treasurer of Norfolk County. Collins too would end up in prison, in 1985, for embezzling county pension funds. The Collins family’s most memorable contribution to Bulger lore would be to spread the rumor that he was actually part Polish or Lithuanian—a believable enough falsehood, given his light hair.
By most accounts, Billy and his crew simply outworked everyone else, and on primary day they prevailed. On election night, he stopped in at the parties of all his major opponents. Where they had called him “One Suit” Bulger, Billy later recalled, he told them he owed his victory to his lucky suit. When he ran into Collins’s father, he told him it was the Polish and Lithuanian votes that had put him over the top. All the while Billy kept smiling. In January he would be a state rep. Finally, a male member of the Bulger family would have a real job.
CHAPTER 2
B ILLY B ULGER WAS SWORN in as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives on January 5, 1961. Senator John F. Kennedy would succeed Dwight Eisenhower as president in just over two weeks.
A new era might have been about to dawn nationally, but back on Beacon Hill it was business as usual. Politics was still an overwhelmingly Irish game, so much so that an Irish name, it sometimes appeared, was all you needed in politics to succeed.
Everyone seemed to be named Hynes, or Hines, or Craven, or McDonough, or McCormack. There were Tierneys and Kearneys and Connollys galore. Both the president-elect and the state treasurer of Massachusetts were named John F. Kennedy. John E. Kerrigan would soon be joined on the Boston City Council by John J. Kerrigan.
Billy Bulger took office as one of 240 members of the House of Representatives. There were few actual offices at the State House for most of the legislators. All but about forty—the leadership and the chairmen of the more important committees—operated out of the House chambers, from their desks, which were more like open carrels in a public library. The reps had no direct phone lines; calls were taken at the bank of telephones just outside the chambers.
White flight out of the city of Boston was just beginning, and the city delegation still represented one-sixth of the House—forty of the 240 members. Twenty-three of the forty were Irish, seven were Italian, five were Yankee Republicans, and four were Jews. Of the three blacks in the delegation, two had been elected for the first time in 1960—an indication of the continuing black migration into Roxbury, which was starting to spill into North Dorchester.
The rules of life at the State House in 1961 boiled down to three points:
1. Nothing on the level.
2. Everything is a deal.
3. No deal too small.
The Boston reps lived and died by that credo. Of the forty House members from Boston who were sworn in with Billy in January 1961, at least five ended up in prison—two for income tax evasion, one for bribery, one for assaulting a federal narcotics agent, and another for larceny in connection with a state sidewalk-construction project. Another of the 1961–62 reps was eventually indicted, but acquitted, and two others, including Billy, made appearances before grand juries.
That was how Massachusetts politics operated. Edwin O’Connor, the author of
The Last Hurrah
, summed up the era in his final novel,
All in the Family
: “Corruption here had a shoddy, penny ante quality it did not have in other states....
One of his most formidable opponents was Gerry O’Leary, a high school football hero who would later go to prison for an attempted $650,000 shakedown of a school bus company in 1980 while he was serving on the Boston School Committee. Another tough foe was James Collins Jr., son of a well-heeled bookmaker who would later move out of Boston and be elected treasurer of Norfolk County. Collins too would end up in prison, in 1985, for embezzling county pension funds. The Collins family’s most memorable contribution to Bulger lore would be to spread the rumor that he was actually part Polish or Lithuanian—a believable enough falsehood, given his light hair.
By most accounts, Billy and his crew simply outworked everyone else, and on primary day they prevailed. On election night, he stopped in at the parties of all his major opponents. Where they had called him “One Suit” Bulger, Billy later recalled, he told them he owed his victory to his lucky suit. When he ran into Collins’s father, he told him it was the Polish and Lithuanian votes that had put him over the top. All the while Billy kept smiling. In January he would be a state rep. Finally, a male member of the Bulger family would have a real job.
CHAPTER 2
B ILLY B ULGER WAS SWORN in as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives on January 5, 1961. Senator John F. Kennedy would succeed Dwight Eisenhower as president in just over two weeks.
A new era might have been about to dawn nationally, but back on Beacon Hill it was business as usual. Politics was still an overwhelmingly Irish game, so much so that an Irish name, it sometimes appeared, was all you needed in politics to succeed.
Everyone seemed to be named Hynes, or Hines, or Craven, or McDonough, or McCormack. There were Tierneys and Kearneys and Connollys galore. Both the president-elect and the state treasurer of Massachusetts were named John F. Kennedy. John E. Kerrigan would soon be joined on the Boston City Council by John J. Kerrigan.
Billy Bulger took office as one of 240 members of the House of Representatives. There were few actual offices at the State House for most of the legislators. All but about forty—the leadership and the chairmen of the more important committees—operated out of the House chambers, from their desks, which were more like open carrels in a public library. The reps had no direct phone lines; calls were taken at the bank of telephones just outside the chambers.
White flight out of the city of Boston was just beginning, and the city delegation still represented one-sixth of the House—forty of the 240 members. Twenty-three of the forty were Irish, seven were Italian, five were Yankee Republicans, and four were Jews. Of the three blacks in the delegation, two had been elected for the first time in 1960—an indication of the continuing black migration into Roxbury, which was starting to spill into North Dorchester.
The rules of life at the State House in 1961 boiled down to three points:
1. Nothing on the level.
2. Everything is a deal.
3. No deal too small.
The Boston reps lived and died by that credo. Of the forty House members from Boston who were sworn in with Billy in January 1961, at least five ended up in prison—two for income tax evasion, one for bribery, one for assaulting a federal narcotics agent, and another for larceny in connection with a state sidewalk-construction project. Another of the 1961–62 reps was eventually indicted, but acquitted, and two others, including Billy, made appearances before grand juries.
That was how Massachusetts politics operated. Edwin O’Connor, the author of
The Last Hurrah
, summed up the era in his final novel,
All in the Family
: “Corruption here had a shoddy, penny ante quality it did not have in other states....
Similar Books
