Word: curleys
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...after James M. Curley had just been elected mayor of Boston for the third time, the fight began at the State Democratic Convention to nominate a candidate for governor. Curley was supporting John F. Fitzgerald, a former city mayor, against Joseph B. Ely, a strong Yankee democrat from Springfield. The fight was bitter because Curley feared that Ely, with his popularity throughout the State, would set up a very strong personal machine. Late in the Convention, Fitzgerald withdrew and Ely became nominee for governor in a year which promised success to almost any democrat...
...custom, the vanquished leaders, Fitzgerald and Curley, met Ely to congratulate him on a public platform in Worcester. When it came time for Curley to speak, he rose and presented Ely with a check for $1000 --"to show my sincerity in the effort to elect Mr. Ely." The press the next day went wild, praising Curley for his magnanimity; but Mr. Ely was less enthused. The check had been made payable to the Boston City Committee --to be used by the mayor and not by Mr. Ely for getting out the Boston vote...
This sort of shrewd gallery play is what makes James M. Curley the most colorful and probably the most successful politician in Boston's history. In whatever Curley does in public life, he is ostentatious--whether driving down Boylston Street when the theatre crowd lets out with the lights on in the back seat of his limousine; or stealing the show at the Harvard Tercentenary celebration with an eloquent dissertation on the history of the relationship between the State of Massachusetts and Harvard--plus a timely presidential election year plug for Franklin D. Roosevelt...
Born of a very poor family in 1874, Curley's first home was near the city hospital, in the mud-flats of South Boston. It was an environment of native Irishmen, hod-carriers and widow-scrubwomen; a savage place where you had to be tough to be honest and cunning to be dishonest. Curley, at the outset of his career, fell in the middle. He was a politician, and therefore cunning, almost from the beginning, but in contrast to the previous ward leaders he demanded that his constituents get something for their vote. Eventually, after numerous intermediate positions of ward...
...four items on the city books during the past administration which they claimed were a gross and extravagant loss to the city. In another column in the newspaper, the research group pointed out the facts and figures of Maurice J. Tobin's victory over present Mayor James M. Curley...