The Loaves and the Fishes

Massachusetts and Missouri are the two states most often taken to illustrate the old-line workings of American party politics. But Massachusetts probably has a slight edge in its perfection of the quest for the loaves and fishes, if only because here the art of politics has had so much more time to develop its distinctive style. With a settled regional economy, the avenues to succss here are limited and winning elections has become a financially and socially rewarding profession.

Massachusetts' uniqueness is underlined too by the fact that here much of the common mechanism of state governments was originated and perfected--from the state constitution to the notion that a victorious party has the God-given right to gerrymander any election district that it can get its hands on. And Massachusetts has given the nation the epitome of personal political leadership in the forty-year career of Jim Curley. For despite his occasional imprisonment and current forced retirement, Boston's loyalty to the Curley image--to the man who provides Christmas baskets for the poor and keeps his followers on the City Payroll--nevertheless endures as a source of local pride.

This year's gubernatorial contest in Massachusetts is no exception to this tradition of exploiting the body politic, even though this year both opponents are college trained. The issues that divide Democrat Foster Furcolo and Republican Sumner G. Whittier are essentially aged versions of the rallying cries of the last two decades--expanded social welfare legislation and the mismanagement of the other party's years in office. The campaign blueprints are the same too, although the candidates are both relative newcomers to the top level of state politics. The Democrat must pull the heartstrings with his pension plans and labor benefits, and the Republican has to do the same while covering his committments to the Associated Industries back in Swampscott for Swansea. But whatever their real beliefs, both Furcolo and Whittier must aim their pitches at the bulk of Massachusetts' voters, the second generation Americans who are just emerging from bondage in an urban slum.

The Democrat, who went to Yale (1933) and was graduated from Yale Law School, nevertheless underlines his kinship with the Italo-American, whose estimated 300,000 votes represent an attractive plum in a state where 30,000 pluralities are common. A former U.S. Representative, he served as State Treasurer for two and a half years under Governor Paul Dever, whose sopping brow inundated the nation's TV sets during his keynote speech four years ago at the Democratic National Convention. Furcolo, who has been criticized as "Dever's man" for his fair-haired position in the last Democratic Administration, lost to Sen. Leverett Saltonstall '14, in 1954 by only 28,000 votes in a senatorial race so close that morning papers headlined a Furcolo victory.

Whittier at 45 (the same age as Fucolo) has been a bright young lad in the Massachusetts GOP for many years. A graduate of Boston University with a B.A. and a law degree, he was first elected to the Everett Common Council in 1938. He served in both houses of the General Court, and for a time was the State's youngest senator. Although he is a descendent of both John Greenleaf Whittier and Charles Sumner, he is not considered a "blueblood" by the Republican party regulars. But Whittier nonetheless puts to good use his residence in a three-decker apartment house in Everett, a declining lower-middle class suburb abutting Somerville. Before an urban audience, the campaigner calls himself a "three-decker Republican."

Whittier's ambitions for the governorship have been publicized since 1950, when Dever won his second term. An excellent orator and clever platform speaker, he became the Republicans' chief critic of the Dever Administration, attacking the Governor from the floor of the State Senate and in every possible headline for inefficiency and corruption. Dever once became so incensed with the young senator that he barred him from the Governor's office.

In 1952, Whittier declared that he would like to run for Governor, but reluctantly settled for Lieutenant Governor under Christian A. Herter '15. The Republicans were triumphantly elected in their national sweep and entered on four years of moderately progressive state administration. Governor Herter has compiled a reasonably successful record despite antiquated parliamentary procedures in the legislature and a close party division between the House and Senate that turns every major legislative proposal into a political issue.

Whittier, meanwhile, has been shaking hands up and down the halls of the State House and through every sizeable Massachusetts city and town. His unsuccessful 1954 opponant for re-election, James A. Burke of Hyde Park, charged then that Whittier was the "most expensive Lieutenant Governor the state has ever had. He has turned the office into a publicity mill," Burke said. And Dever, biting back at Whittier before a recent Truman testimonial dinner, said, "You have your Nixon on the national scale. We have our Whittier in Massachusetts. They are counterparts."

This manifest ambition has caused Republicans as well as Democrats to be somewhat restive about their young David. But when Whittier's impending nomination for the governorship caused a split in the state GOP early this summer, considerations of practicality resolved the issue. Furcolo, too, was caught in a party fight recently, but the division turned out to be native only to a political off-year. Many liberal Democrats, nonetheless, still harbor resentment toward Furcolo for his conduct before a 1954 A.D.A. dinner when he told that organization to disband as a detriment to the candidacy of the Democrats it endorses.

Much of Whittier's popularity, on the other hand, is due to his extreme tact. Boston newspapers have painted him as an attractive young liberal, while they have grown increasingly hostile toward Furcolo. A much more reserved campaigner than Whittier, Furcolo often appears more self-conscious than confident. But a reconciliation with popular Sen. John F. Kennedy '39 and the extensive efforts of his party's bush beaters managed to give the Longmeadow lawyer an almost 3-to-1 victory in last month's Democratic primary.

Furcolo's margin of victory, in a primary where more than two-thirds of his party participated, is taken as an encouraging sign by Democrats bent on recapturing Beacon Hill. With Democratic registration up 60,000 over 1952 and GOP totals down by 7,000, the Democrats are looking forward to an election in which their party regularity will be a significant asset. But the members of each faction total only 700,000 each in a constituency of two and a half million registered voters, so the independent--who in Massachusetts is typically the sought-after member of an ethnic group--will again be decisive in this Massachusetts election.