Eddie Markey owes Mike Flaherty.
That’s as a result of Flaherty, the longtime well-respected South Boston legislator who died final week, helped, inadvertently or not, launch Markey’s profitable political profession.
Flaherty, 89, was buried on Monday.
Markey, 79, is in search of reelection to the U.S. Senate.
All of it started some time in the past (1975) when each had been members of the Massachusetts Home of Representatives: Flaherty, as a veteran member (elected in 1967), and Markey, 29, a fresh-faced newcomer from Malden in search of to make a reputation for himself.
Flaherty was chairman of the Home Committee on the Judiciary, appointed to the place by the late Home Speaker Tom McGee, a tough-talking former U.S. Marine fight veteran of Iwo Jima in WWII.
McGee additionally named Markey to the committee though he didn’t know who he was.
The Democrat-controlled Home again then was made up of an unwieldy 240 members, not the 160 it’s right this moment, and McGee didn’t ordinarily know each Democrat within the chamber.
In any occasion, Markey, in search of consideration, angered McGee over a invoice coping with abolishing part-time district courtroom judges.
McGee, so the story goes, obtained Flaherty to kick Markey off the Judiciary Committee and allegedly had his desk moved out of the committee workplace suite into the hallway.
It was no massive deal on the time, and no person paid a lot consideration to the occasion.
Again then, although, rank-and-file legislators like Markey had no workplace to be thrown out of.
Earlier than the discount of the dimensions of the Home went into impact in 1978, common members of the Home had no places of work.
A part of the attraction in eliminating 80 Home seats — a minimum of for the Massachusetts League of Ladies Voters, which pushed the proposal — was that each one legislators could be offered workplace area, employees, and full-time pay for a part-time job.
Earlier than the Home lower, members of the Home labored from their desks within the Home chamber or from committee listening to rooms.
They made and acquired telephone calls from phone cubicles within the Home foyer. However they had been accessible to constituents as a result of there have been extra of them. When the every day Home session ended, they went residence.
Now legislators are so staffed up and shielded of their places of work that you’re fortunate to get a return name, not to mention discuss to 1 in particular person.
The 160-member Home additionally grew to become extra manageable, although. Members are actually so in hock to the management that nobody dares to query choices made by Home and Senate leaders. In return, docile members are granted workplace area, employees, parking areas, stipends and safety from having to take stands on controversial points.
Very often lately, choices on main items of laws are usually not made after debate on the Home flooring, however quietly behind closed doorways.
There isn’t a room for rebels within the trendy Massachusetts Legislature.
Which is why Markey stood out.
Months after Markeys run in with McGee and Flaherty, U.S. Rep. Torbert Macdonald of Malden and the then seventh Congressional district died.
Markey was the primary to announce for the seat in a particular election that attracted a dozen Democrat candidates.
To not be outdone, Markey and a tv crew went to the State Home one quiet weekend to movie a tv advert. They discovered a desk and a chair sitting in an empty hallway and filmed Markey standing in entrance of it.
He appeared to have simply been thrown off the committee and never months earlier than.
Trying like a younger Clint Eastwood, Markey mentioned within the advert: “The bosses might inform me the place to sit down. Nobody tells me the place to face.”
It was a grasp stroke. He received the election and by no means seemed again.
After I requested McGee and Flaherty about it one time, Flaherty smiled, McGee chuckled and mentioned, “Hey, good luck to the child.”
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas may be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
