BOSTON — There is probably no place in the U.S. more appropriate to stage a Democratic National Convention than the city of Boston.
That’s particularly true this year because the presumptive nominee is John Kerry, a native son who keeps a town house in the Beacon Hill neighborhood and has served as Massachusetts’ junior senator since 1982. Kerry provides more than a symbolic connection to the Bay State’s most famous politician, John F. Kennedy, who was a Democratic Congressman and then a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts before he captured the presidency in 1960.
Boston is infused with the Kennedy name and mythology. John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, JFK’s grandfather and the father of Kennedy clan matriarch Rose Kennedy, served two stints as the city’s mayor (1906-’08 and 1910-’14). The bigger-than-life Honey Fitz was the model for the protagonist in the political novel “The Last Hurrah” by Edwin O’Connor.
The late Speaker of the House, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, succeeded Kennedy as the Congressman representing South Boston after JFK was elected to the Senate in 1952.
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JFK’s brother, Edward M. Kennedy, whose own presidential aspirations were thwarted, has represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate since 1962. He lobbied hard, along with Democratic three-term Mayor Thomas M. Menino, to bring Boston its first convention.
— K.B.