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 searching for 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 searching for 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 in the present day, and McGee didn’t ordinarily know each Democrat within the chamber.
In any occasion, Markey, searching for consideration, angered McGee over a invoice coping with abolishing part-time district court docket judges.
McGee, so the story goes, acquired 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 huge 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 workplaces.
A part of the enchantment in eliminating 80 Home seats — at the very least for the Massachusetts League of Girls Voters, which pushed the proposal — was that each one legislators could be supplied 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 cellphone 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 workplaces that you’re fortunate to get a return name, not to mention discuss to 1 in individual.
The 160-member Home additionally grew to become extra manageable, although. Members at the moment are so in hock to the management that nobody dares to query selections 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 nowadays, selections on main items of laws are usually not made after debate on the Home ground, however quietly behind closed doorways.
There isn’t any 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 take a seat. Nobody tells me the place to face.”
It was a grasp stroke. He received the election and by no means regarded 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
