Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage (13 page)

She was right. Timing was critical. Drinan had shared the bad news with his close circle the day before. Nomination petitions bearing the signatures of two thousand registered voters from the congressional district had to be filed by 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday.

If I chose to run, I would have fifty-two hours to gather those signatures. The decision I made turned out to be one of the two most important in my life. Coming out of the closet would be the second. Ironically, the first decision postponed the second.

I had come to terms emotionally with going public about my sexuality. I had finally found a way to free myself from the constant fear of exposure and the consequent need for self-denial that life in the closet had required. But becoming a candidate for Congress put me right back where I had been at fourteen: confronting the irreconcilability between my sexuality and my political ambition.

We had made a great deal of progress in reducing homophobia, but I did not believe I could possibly win a seat in the U.S. Congress—in a district of more than four hundred thousand people—as an openly gay man. This was especially the case because I did not actually live in that district. Legally, according to the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution, that was not necessary. But politically, according to the prevailing rules of the game, it was all but essential.

Yet I chose to run anyway. My logic was simple: I couldn’t imagine a better chance to win an important office, and if I did win that office, I believed I could exert more influence on public policy than I could in any other conceivable role.

Of course, I wasn’t ready to make my decision on the spur of the moment, and without consultation. Fortunately, Jim Segel returned home shortly after my conversation with his wife, and we arranged to meet immediately. I told him that I was thinking seriously about running. He gave me the excellent direct advice you get only from a very good friend: “Fuck think! If you want to run, start now and I’ll help. If you’re going to piss this away by agonizing, let me know now so I can take my kids to the movies like I promised.” Rebecca and Jennifer never got to the movies that day.

Throughout this book, I have attempted to rebut a popular misconception about politics: that public offices are filled with ambitious, driven men—women are rarely included in this stereotype—whose electoral success is the result of a carefully plotted pursuit of political victory. What this omits is the crucial role that luck plays in this process. In America, you get to run for office only when the right vacancy arises. This means that even the most determined would-be state senator or mayor or congressman is not the master of his fate. During my first campaign,
The Boston Globe
Statehouse reporter, Bob Turner, wrote a very helpful and gratifying column about me titled “Born to Be a Congressman.” Similar things were said about me when I retired.

But I did not owe my career in Congress solely to my talent or driving ambition. I owed it first and foremost to a man over whom I had no influence: Pope John Paul II. (After I took over his seat, Drinan regretted never getting the chance to ask the pope if he was happy with the way that decision worked out.)

The fact that successful politicians owe so much to luck was summed up best by Tip O’Neill. When Edward Markey, who is now a senator from Massachusetts, expressed regret that he had won a seat in Congress at the age of thirty only because of the early death of O’Neill’s friend Torbert Macdonald, O’Neill assuaged Markey’s guilty feelings. “Eddie,” he said, “don’t you realize that we are in a business where you only get ahead because of the death, defeat, or disgrace of one of your friends?” O’Neill understood this well. He’d become Speaker of the House only after Congressman Hale Boggs, my involuntary post-Mississippi host, was lost in a plane crash while campaigning for a colleague in Alaska.

*

My decision to run for Congress had immediate consequences. First, I began telephoning my relatives, friends, and political allies to solicit their help. Second, I put aside all thoughts of making my homosexuality public. One of my first calls was to my sister Doris and her husband, Jim Breay. When Jim answered the phone, I told him I was now a congressional candidate and asked him a question: Did you just hear a closet door slam?

Jim immediately offered their house—which was in the district—as a temporary headquarters, and he and Doris were from then on indispensable sources of personal and political support. Doris was my campaign treasurer for my entire thirty-two-year tenure in Congress, and in that capacity handled well over $25 million in complex financial transactions with great skill. And she consistently refused any payment for her work.

Simultaneously, I began organizing my petition drive and courting Drinan’s political committee. I was greatly aided by my brother, David, who had worked as Drinan’s press secretary a few years earlier and was now an aide to the liberal New York congressman Stephen Solarz.

My legislative record—in substance and, to be candid, in stridency—was close to Drinan’s. And with all of my quirks—known and suspected—I was not on the face of it a more controversial choice than a Catholic priest with his own distinctive personality.

There was one other aspirant who had as strong a claim as I did to be Drinan’s liberal heir. He was a charismatic antiwar activist who had served in Vietnam. When Drinan had first run for Congress in 1970, this man was the peace caucus’s second choice. After losing narrowly to Drinan, he campaigned strenuously and effectively for him. Two years later he lost a Congressional race to a right-wing smear campaign orchestrated by the Nixon hit man Charles Colson, but he continued to be an active leader of Massachusetts progressives. He had the enduring gratitude of the Drinan people for his grace in defeat in 1970, and by then he was living in the district.

Because we did not want to split the liberal vote, he and I needed to decide which one of us would run. Game theory helps explain why I became the candidate. Simply put, he had other electoral options, given his broader political appeal, and I did not. That is, he had much more to lose than I did if we couldn’t work things out. There was an added factor in my favor. One of his closest friends—a fellow antiwar veteran—was positioned to win my seat in the state house if I ran for Congress. Given all that, and his willingness to put personal ambition aside for the sake of his political convictions, he endorsed me.

Our view that he had many more options than I did soon proved correct, as John Kerry went on to be a lieutenant governor, senator, Democratic presidential nominee, and secretary of state. With Kerry’s gracious support, I won the backing of the Drinan Committee, and the primary race was on.

The four of us who won ballot positions neatly exemplified the Democratic Party’s divides at the time. State Representative David Mofenson and I were liberals. Arthur Clark, mayor of Waltham, the second-largest city in the district, and Robert Shaffer were more conservative, though in national terms, only Shaffer was genuinely on the right. Clark was opposed to abortion, no fan of gay rights, and far more supportive of a large military budget than I was. He also enjoyed backing from the AFL-CIO (my efforts to restrain Boston transit workers’ wages did not help me with the union leadership, though I did receive support from the more liberal United Auto Workers). With the backing of the Drinan Committee, which voted 25 to 5 in my favor, the subsequent public endorsement of Drinan himself, and my legislative record, I was the leading liberal candidate. Clark, as the candidate with the largest electoral base, was the dominant conservative.

I could not have achieved my status in the race without the willingness of two leading liberals to put aside legitimate personal grievances. Though I’d backed his Republican opponent, Senator Paul Tsongas made no objection when his twin sister, Thaleia Schlesinger, signed on as my press secretary (and, as she realized was necessary, my fashion adviser). Meanwhile, Michael Dukakis remained benevolently neutral. I would learn from Tsongas and Dukakis the importance of disciplining my own emotional responses in the course of political battles.

*

I campaigned vigorously from early May through November, disliking almost every minute of it. I went from store to store to introduce myself, accompanied where possible by a popular local figure. I marched in July 4th parades and attended fairs, picnics, and any public gathering at which I was at least marginally welcome—my entourage and I were loudly chased away from one outdoor wedding. We concentrated our activity in those parts of the district where I lacked support. Our hope was that by introducing myself in person, I would dispel the presumption that I was a radical interloper. After all, my campaign faced a number of obstacles. Even though I’d moved into the district, I was coming there from Boston, and the shady life of a big city conjured up fears and distrust. (It is an axiom in most states that mayors of the largest city rarely become governors.) Even more problematic was my legislative record of aggressively championing gay rights, legal abortion, gun control, racial integration, legalized prostitution within certain areas, and the right of adults to consume marijuana and pornography (not necessarily at the same time). I was also unmarried—meaning at best that I had no appreciation of family life. And I was Jewish. By itself, my religious background might not have loomed large, but it reinforced the likelihood that I would be viewed as something of an alien. (As a point of historical interest, I am still the only Jewish congressman to represent Massachusetts since Leopold Morse retired in 1888. In his case a contributing factor was that he did get married—to a Christian, alienating both sides of the divide.)

My biggest liability, as usual, was that I hated campaigning. I know that politicians often tell a crowd how much they like the trail. Later in my career, after I felt secure in my seat, I shared with audiences my conviction that whenever they hear that, they are almost certainly listening to a liar or a sociopath. Candidates for elected office are always under tremendous pressure. On Election Day, they know they will be either winners or losers. No other profession confronts its members with such a stark result. Lawyers who lose cases may feel sorry for their clients, but they do not go to prison or lose significant amounts of money. Doctors whose patients die may grieve, but they will continue to practice medicine. For candidates who lose, that enterprise is over. And the loss is not just complete, it also is very public. There may be people in my former line of work who enjoy living with this prospect, but I haven’t met any of them.

While you are contemplating the possibility of utter failure, you are also expected to pretend that you enjoy twelve-to fourteen-hour stints cheerfully introducing yourself to strangers, many of whom wish you would leave them alone. You repeat yourself eight or ten times a day to audiences, an ordeal alleviated only by encounters with journalists whose objective is to expose, embarrass, or confound you. From time to time these ordeals will be set aside for a debate, which will be judged significant only if you or your opponent says something stupid, clearly erroneous, or politically damaging.

Campaigning for state rep in my small, friendly legislative district had not been unpleasant. But running for Congress, especially in the hostile sections of the district where I had to spend most of my time, was awful. Moreover, the more I dislike something, the worse I am at doing it—and the worse I perform, the unhappier I get. I regret this aspect of my personality but have been unable to change it.

Despite my many defects as a candidate, my campaign was well run. The political strategist John Marttila, the pollster Tom Kiley, and the media specialist Dan Payne crafted a winning strategy. They focused on maximizing my appeal—ideological, if not personal—in the southern parts of the district, which included the liberal (and disproportionately Jewish) cities of Brookline and Newton.

My lifelong ally Jim Segel and my brother, David, who took a leave from his work for Solarz, executed this strategy well. And Thaleia Schlesinger successfully persuaded the media to report the substance of what I said, rather than dwell on the occasionally ungracious way I said it. Mary Beth Cahill, a young woman from the politically critical town of Framingham, signed on to help direct our field operation—including the critical get-out-the-vote drive. As the Irish daughter of a worker at the local GM plant and a committed liberal, she bridged the ethnic/ideological gap, and turned out to be enormously good at politics—a fact recognized later by several other politicians, including John Kerry, whose presidential campaign she managed (and managed well). The two finance cochairs, Richard Morningstar and my longtime ally from Massachusetts liberal politics, Nancy Korman, drew heavily on the liberal and Jewish communities—overlapping but not identical—to make my campaign the best funded in the race.

Finally, Dorothy Reichard—who’d been Drinan’s chief Massachusetts administrative and political aide—provided continuity between the past and present. She mobilized support for my campaign and would remain indispensable to me for the next thirty years.

With their guidance, I was consistently ahead in the polls, not overwhelmingly but by enough to win. But even the best-managed campaigns are subject to outside events they cannot control. Shaffer, who seemed highly motivated by his personal dislike of me, spent most of the primary on the attack, until late August, when he dropped out and endorsed Clark. This was a very dangerous moment for our campaign, because it left Clark alone on the conservative side, while Mofenson still drew some liberal votes from me. This led to strong pressure on Mofenson, who wanted to continue his political career in Newton, to emulate Shaffer. In September he announced he hoped people would vote for me instead of him.

That was hardly the end of our difficulties, however. In early September, the archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, suddenly issued a strong plea for Catholic voters to repudiate my candidacy and that of James Shannon, a liberal first-term congressman from an adjoining district, because of our support for legal abortion.