What It Takes (99 page)

And there was Michael’s problem: he couldn’t stop Quinn, and he couldn’t run against him: Michael was a Party-
builder.
He couldn’t try to knock off a Democrat incumbent. Anyway, Michael wasn’t strong enough to fight a bloody civil war.

So, he did what he had to: he voted
for
the old regular, Quinn ... and then he walked over to the house of Beryl Cohen—his fellow reformer, and his friend since Brookline High. Michael knocked on the door, nine o’clock at night. When Cohen brought him in, Michael told him without preamble: Dukakis was now a candidate for Lieutenant Governor.

Beryl just gaped—he couldn’t talk. His head was racing with the things they’d done together, the plans they’d made ... twelve years! All he could finally pfumfer out was the horrible, obvious fact: “Michael,
I’m
running for Lieutenant Governor.”

Dukakis just stared at the floor.

What else could Michael do? He’d gone too far, talked to too many people, rallied every reform group in the Commonwealth about the importance of the process, about
the kind of people
—serious people—who must come to the fore!

That was Michael’s most characteristic phrase: “the kind of people.” That’s as personal as he got. Fran Meaney always tried to remind him: “You’ve got to ask for their help!” But it seemed to Michael, if they were informed of his credentials, apprised of his serious concern ... it would be apparent that
he was exactly
...
the kind of guy
.

He showed them in so many ways. This was the time—amid the upheaval of the McCarthy campaign, Bobby Kennedy’s race for the White House, his assassination, the inner-city riots, the Summer of Love, the intense anguish over Vietnam—that Michael Dukakis found his issues: highway planning and no-fault insurance.

Dukakis was the first legislator to help neighborhood groups save their homes from the highways. He was the first official to promote alternative plans and planners. And in ’69, after Governor Volpe moved on to Washington, Michael lined up twenty members of the Democratic Study Group to demand from the new Governor, Frank Sargent ... a
moratorium
... on highway construction in Boston.

Dukakis was also first to promote the new concept of no-fault insurance. Small cases would never go to court. A driver would collect from his own insurance—without regard to fault. This would streamline the courts, put money into the pockets of the aggrieved, and cut the cost of premiums in Massachusetts (at that time, the highest in the nation). This was not ideological, it was simply rational—in other words, vintage Dukakis.

Of course, no one thought he could do it. The lawyers, the insurance companies—they
loved
the old system. But they did not reckon with Dukakis, who went at this like a steam piston. The first year, he got his bill through the House, but was stopped in the Senate. After ’68, when Quinn became AG and the House leadership was reshuffled, the new chairman of the Insurance Committee, Ned Dever, lined up against him. Michael’s bill languished for another year while he worked on Dever. Finally, in 1970, Dever passed the bill to the floor, the House passed it again, but still, the Senate balked. So Michael went to work on the Senators: he’d sit them down and explain, in clipped, complete sentences, why his bill was the only reasonable and decent solution. He got Fran Meaney to organize a committee on the outside: Lawyers for No-Fault. The
Globe
piled on, editorializing for no-fault.

Dukakis went at his issue, in other words, just like he lined up his convention vote for Lieutenant Governor—with the same public-private mix of pressure and argument, the same meticulous organization, and dogged insistence on his own correctness. Eighteen hundred delegates, or twenty-six Senators—it was the same: Michael would hit them all.

If there was certainty to be had in this line of work, he would have it ... at least he’d go to bed, on the last night, knowing there were no mistakes—no blank boxes on his checklist.

They stood no more than twenty feet apart, near the door of the convention hall in Amherst, Michael and Beryl Cohen. As candidates, they were barred from the convention floor, so all they could do was greet delegates at the door.

It was Saturday morning, June 13, 1970. The night before, the delegates had given the endorsement for Governor to the clubhouse favorite, Maurice Donahue, the Senate President. (Kevin White was rebuffed—but he’d fight on, in the primary.) Beryl was on top of his game, on top of the world. His candidate for Governor now held control of the floor. The Senators were Beryl’s pals!

Then Donahue’s man, Bob Kelly, came out to the gate, motioned to Beryl to step inside.

“I’m not supposed to be in there.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Kelly sat Beryl down on the steps, then gave him the news: “You’re not gonna win.”

Beryl went berserk: “What the hell do you mean? ... Donahue’s gonna screw me? ... How
could
he? ... Why
would
he?”

Beryl asked: “Dukakis?”

Kelly shook his head. “Neither of you’s gonna win.”

Beryl jumped up, called to his guys—get the Senators outside the gates—right now! The vote was already starting. Delegations were mysteriously abstaining, taking dives ... phone calls from Donahue’s men must’ve frozen the chairmen.

Outside, Beryl saw Dukakis, just standing at the fence—poor little bastard had no idea.

“I just got told ...” Beryl said. “Neither of us ...”

Michael hardly blinked. Beryl thought he must not
get it
—Donahue was going to shaft them both!

Beryl couldn’t stand still. He was going down the tubes! When the Senators got there, he gathered them under a tree. They had to help him! He was being screwed! They were all being screwed! Donahue wanted a deadlock so he could put in a ringer—his own man. They had to stop it ... for Beryl. He was begging!

But how could they stop it? If you’re working by deal ... well, the deal can change.

And then, a funny thing happened on the floor. Dukakis’s votes did not take a dive. They held him near the top through the first ballot—no one had a majority. Fran Meaney, Hackie Kassler, Allan Sidd, Carl Sapers, prowled the aisles for Dukakis. They wore red bandanas. They had hand signals, walkie-talkies. They had captains in the delegations. They had their plans, no matter what—they had assignments to rush the stage if the microphone suddenly went on the fritz and Donahue’s men tried to mumble around, then raise someone’s arm as the “victor.”

A second ballot started. Up at the chair, delegates were coming forward: What was the deal? Was there a deal?

Donahue’s men denied any deal.

Well, then, the delegates were voting Dukakis.

“The guy came to my house ... twice!”

All of a sudden, it came clear, there wasn’t going to be any deadlock, any deal—because Michael had not only beaten Beryl Cohen—he’d beaten Donahue, and anybody else who wanted his delegates. Michael had worked on those people for years ... and no one could pick them off with a phone call—that era was over. This was another age—started that Saturday morning—the age of Michael Dukakis, who was, within minutes, the officially endorsed candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.

Well, it didn’t quite work out in November. For one thing, Donahue and Kevin White spent the whole primary beating up one another. But even after White dispatched Donahue, there were problems.

The big problem was Frank Sargent.

Sure, he lucked into the Governor’s chair (he was Lieutenant Governor when Volpe went off to work for Nixon) ... but Sargent was no slouch. He, too, knew a new age was dawning, and sunrise was not going to find him acting like a Republican in a state where Humphrey beat Nixon, two-to-one. When Democrats in the House and Senate passed a bill to prohibit the President from sending citizens of Massachusetts to fight in “an undeclared war” ... Sargent signed it. When National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State, Sargent ordered the U.S. flag removed from atop the State House.

In fact, Sargent spent that whole year looking for ways to align himself with the state’s Democratic “mainstream.” Opposition to the war was not enough. He needed issues that hit closer to home.

And so, citizens of the Commonwealth were treated to a statewide TV address, in which the Governor revealed, he had rethought state policy, and was now announcing: a
moratorium
on highway construction in greater Boston.

In the summer, as the campaign heated up, Sargent asked for statewide airtime again, to announce that lobbyists for the lawyers and insurance companies were jamming the State House, trampling the interests of the citizens! Sargent would stand for it no more! He vowed to keep the Senate in session
till he got a no-fault bill. ...
“I don’t care if the session runs until hell freezes over!”

And the Senate passed no-fault.

There was great keening and rumbling from the insurance industry. This was the nation’s first no-fault bill. Companies threatened to stop writing policies in Massachusetts. So Sargent went back on statewide TV—he signed the bill, on the air!

How could White and Dukakis match that?

They could not. In fact, White couldn’t do anything in the last month of the campaign. A bleeding ulcer sent him to the hospital. Michael had to carry the ticket on his own.

And he did. Everybody saw how ably he ran, how he spoke on the issues. (And Michael only second man on the slate!) In fact, Dukakis wanted to debate: not against the Republicans’ Lieutenant Governor nominee—he wanted Sargent.

Of course, Sargent ducked. He was cruising in the polls—and no one wanted to debate Dukakis: that was a pattern that would persist.

There were others:

Dukakis had to work with White’s wise guys ... but he didn’t want their direction, their words in his mouth. He wanted his own people (who took their cues from him).

For the first time now, there was money—a different kind of money. (Though, still, there was turkey tetrazzini ... in fact, Michael could cook a mean tetrazzini himself.) Michael had a friend doing money, Dick Geisser, a nonpolitician, a businessman who’d sold his company. Every night, Geisser would come to Michael’s kitchen table with the checks, and read out the names.

“Nope,” Michael would say.

“Nope, nope ... send it back.”

Michael wouldn’t take more than five hundred dollars—though the law allowed one thousand. He didn’t
like
contributions over a hundred. And no lobbyists—not a cent. And no one who did business with the state. No one who was
regulated
by the state.

His own guys—Carl Sapers, for one—told him he was crazy.

Geisser was the one who’d have to ask, “Why not?” ... He was the guy who’d have to call up the donors, tell them why their money was no good. Michael would explain who this one was, and that one. It was a masterful tour of Massachusetts ... by check.

That was the other pattern: Michael knew more than anyone else in that room. And the rest of the fellows—if they stayed, they fell into step. Everybody wanted good marks from Michael. You sure didn’t want to argue: he’d give you a look—you weren’t just wrong, you were on the wrong side!

In the end, the wrong side won. Michael’s campaign ended a quarter-million votes short ... but not without honor. Michael Dukakis had carried the Party standard, all by himself—and everybody could see ...

Michael Dukakis should have been Lieutenant Governor.

That’s what they said, afterward, in living rooms around the state. See, he never really stopped. After the election, he was out of the House, out of office—first time in ten years. He went back to Hill & Barlow (they made him a partner) ... but, really, what he was doing was sewing up the state. The next time was his, to run his own race, his own way. He had earned it.

That’s what they told him:

“Michael, you deserved it—you should be Lieutenant Governor.”

Hell, more than a few said: Michael Dukakis should be Governor!

M
AYBE THAT’S WHY IT
seemed so familiar—the living rooms, the coffee shops, the miles overland to the next little group. ... Michael was convinced he’d done it all before. And that, in turn, fed his growing confidence in Iowa, his air of command, his self-possession. If it wasn’t so efficient and purposeful, it could have been mistaken for ease.

Actually, it was more like relief. How could he have known, when he got into this, that it wasn’t some mysterious sheet of sheer ice? He might have fallen on his face! People might have
ridiculed
... but they did not. Michael didn’t even stumble. This wasn’t any harder—wasn’t any
different
... didn’t feel different.

Sometimes, if he was alone, or with Kitty, or John, or the girls, he’d admit: it was almost unbelievable, how doable it was, how people looked at him as a
serious candidate
for the Presidency of the United States. That summer,
Newsweek
called him the Democratic front-runner ... the man with the money and the horses ... him! A child of parents who came to this country without one dollar, one word of English! It was ... terrific.

Of course, that’s not how it came out when he talked about his feelings ... well, he didn’t talk about his feelings. He might do a child-of-immigrants riff, but he’d rattle it off like one more credential, or some check mark on his to-do list:

Governmentthatworks ...

Immigrantswhomadeit ...

If a profile writer, or some other blip on his screen, asked what these months meant to him, they’d get a snappy answer that left no doubt: Michael was unswayed, unaltered ... unmystified.

But, Governor, hasn’t it changed, for you?

“When you first walk in, you don’t know what to expect. Then you get your sea legs. You get your confidence. You have more information.”

End of discussion. Michael’s tone made it clear, he was past all that.

Sometimes, he’d say what a “terrific learning experience” Iowa had been. But when pressed for lessons learned, he’d say: “People here want very much the same things people everywhere want.”

Of course, he meant people in Massachusetts.