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67 4 Moving Seamlessly from Political Theory at Harvard to Hardball Politics at City Hall in the crowded ten-candidate field in the September 26, 1967, preliminary election for mayor of Boston, louise day hicks finished first with just over 28 percent of the vote. hicks, a South Boston resident and member of the Boston School committee for six years, was a strong opponent of school busing for integration whose campaign slogan was “you know where i stand.” kevin hagan white, the massachusetts secretary of state since 1961, finished a distant second with a little over 20 percent, trailing hicks by about 13,500 votes. State representative John w. Sears, a reform-minded republican much like John lindsay in new york city and the first GoP candidate for mayor of Boston since 1933, edged out the Boston urban renewal chief edward logue, mayor John collins’s choice as successor, for third place. white, despite a campaign described by herb Gleason, an establishment lawyer , Beacon hill reformer, and key white supporter as “worrisome and terribly disorganized,” and run by his brother Terry, who owned a street-line-painting business, was politically well-positioned to face off against hicks in the november general election. most of the liberals at harvard had supported Sears or logue. a few days after the preliminary election for mayor of Boston, almost before Barney could put pencil to paper on his doctoral thesis, the telephone in his east cambridge apartment rang. chris lydon, a young reporter for the Boston Globe, was calling. lydon had covered white as secretary of state and gotten to know him well. he also had reported on the edward mccormack campaign for governor in 1966 for the Globe and gotten to know Barney during that campaign. chapter Four 68 “would you be interested in helping kevin white in the general election campaign for mayor against louise day hicks? lydon asked. “Barney,” lydon recalled years later, “was the perfect person for the job.” kevin white had grown up in politics. his father, Joseph, had represented west roxbury and the north end. his father-in-law, william Galvin, known as “mother Gal” because as the manager of a bar in charleston he would deliver regular customers who got drunk and passed out to the front steps of their homes, had been the political boss of charleston and served on the Boston city council. a graduate of williams college and Boston college law School, white had been an assistant district attorney. with the support of his father and father-in-law, he had captured the democratic nomination for secretary of state in 1960 and beaten the republican candidate, edward Brooke, in the general election. “kevin had these irish bases of support in parts of the city,” lydon explained, but he needed someone to give the campaign for mayor “intellectual coherence as well as political coherence.” lydon knew Barney Frank to be a bright guy, whose ability to write and to focus on issues white desperately needed in the campaign. lydon acted on his own in attempting to recruit Barney for the mayoralty campaign of his friend and neighbor kevin white. “This is an opening for you. it is an opportunity to get in on the ground floor with a candidate who is very interesting politically,” lydon told Barney. he pointed out to the graduate student that it would simply mean delaying his thesis for about five weeks to help the white campaign. Barney characteristically did not hesitate. he replied that it was a door worth knocking on and agreed to set aside his thesis to work in white’s general election campaign. “i did it more out of negative feelings about louise day hicks than pro kevin white,” Barney explained. “People said that white was a good guy, but if he had been running against someone like ed logue in the general election i wouldn’t have gotten involved.” lydon tried to recruit two people that day for the white campaign. The second person that he called was chester hartman, another smart person and a sort of urban radical from new york. at the time hartman was running the commission on low income housing in Boston. But he was not interested. “chester blew it off and Barney made a career out of it,” lydon recalled. kevin white lived on Beacon hill at 158 mount Vernon Street. lydon and his wife, cindy, whom white had introduced to lydon, lived two doors away. cindy lydon’s sister nancy...

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