Word: dicara
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...getting hard to be sure it's really election day if Lawrence S. DiCara '71 isn't on the ballot. DiCara's latest campaign is for Massachusetts secretary of state, and he said last week, "The secretary of state is not a jumping board to national politics, but I don't expect to be secretary of state all my life." But the office is the logical next step in DiCara's methodical rise to power. DiCara was elected to the Boston City Council immediately after leaving Harvard, and he won a landslide re-election campaign last fall. So when DiCara...
Still, it's something of a mystery how DiCara expects to knock off Republican incumbent John F.X. Davoren in November, let alone eliminate a strong field of Democratic contenders. But such mysteries are nothing new to DiCara. Nobody predicted that he would poll the third highest vote total in the city council elections last election day--that is, nobody except DiCara. The ambitious councilor has a deceptive support that is unlike that of any other politician in Boston. His political strength is a lucid memory and a quick recall of the names and faces of almost anyone he has ever...
...DiCara's mind--his chief political asset--works quickly to generate a congenial atmosphere in any meeting. One can almost hear the clicking as his mind makes up a new dossier on an acquaintance or hunts for an old one amid stacks of past encounters. Friends of DiCara claim that his mental vault holds the names, addresses and occupations of at least 7000 to 8000 people in the Boston area. "People tell me I know a lot of people," DiCara says. "I suppose it's one of those traits of personality that I know so many people...
...DiCara's memory made him something of a living legend around Harvard. He admits that during his stay here he knew more people at Harvard than anyone else. "DiCara knew everyone in his class, the class before him and the one after," says one of DiCara's old classmates. "He could walk through the Yard and be bombarded by hellos." DiCara made his Harvard contacts through various means, including parties, classes and selling refrigerators for Harvard Student Agencies. "I would knock on the door of about one sixth of the freshman class, peddling those iceboxes," DiCara says...
...DiCara has always put his memory to good political use. A frequent candidate since his class president days at Boston Latin School, he has had remarkable success in almost every election he has entered. "People used to laugh at Larry when he would run for high school and college offices, but when it came to election day his was the only name they recognized," a longtime DiCara supporter says. "He always used to joke about running for high offices--why he declared for president in 1963. I think he imagines himself to be an Italian John Kennedy...