THROUGHOUT 1954, JACK struggled through two failed back surgeries, having a metal plate put in his back, and countless hospital visits. While the details remained largely mysterious to them, Kenny and Larry knew it was not going well but forged ahead and nevertheless kept developing the Kennedy organization, assuming its leader would return to take charge soon. Privately, though, Kenny told Helen that Jack’s health problems really cast doubt on the Kennedy organization’s future.
For Jack, the next three or four months were periods of convalescence and recovery. Things were so tentative with regard to his medical situation that neither Kenny nor Larry were thinking beyond this year.
If they had any doubts, Bobby’s call confirmed their fears. The minute Kenny took the call, he could tell by Bobby’s tone the news was bad. Jack had once again been given last rites. The family gathered. A political career looked increasingly unlikely. “If he survives,” Bobby said quietly, his voice just above a whisper, “it is unlikely his quality of life would allow him to continue in elected office.”
Jack’s surgery was in New York, ostensibly for back problems that had plagued him since the war. The truth was much more complicated, and though Kenny never addressed it publicly or with anyone save Helen, it was evident that he knew much and said almost nothing. This would be proven by documents and records that Kenny had kept hidden for years in his basement, but when he felt his own death approaching, with Jackie’s guidance, everything had been destroyed. What we do know now is that in 1954 neither Kenny nor Larry yet had the full picture. Besides the bad back, in 1954 Jack began treatment for Addison’s disease. That was only part of what Kenny would learn.
Much of this information was revealed years later, long after Kenny had died, in a book by historian Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life. Dalleck enlisted the help of Dr. Jeffrey Kelman to comb through John Kennedy’s medical records, then stored at the Kennedy Library. Kelman described Jack’s condition in stark terms: “Addison’s disease is adrenal insufficiency. The adrenal gland makes corticosteroids and other hormones that are used for salt metabolism, response to stress, response to inflammation. In ’47 he was officially diagnosed in England as being adrenally insufficient, and from that point on, at least that point on, he was being treated with daily corticosteroids of some form or another. There is some evidence he was actually being treated earlier. . . . But from ’47 he had to receive daily steroids to survive.” Kleman said later, “It’s always dangerous; without being supported, patients die. And the steroids themselves have side effects, including susceptibility to infection. Kennedy needed multiple courses of antibiotics, he had urinary infections, skin infections, he had respiratory infections. By the time he was president, he was on ten, 12 medications a day. He was on antispasmodics for his bowel, paregoric, lamodal transatine [ph], he was on muscle relaxants, Phenobarbital, Librium, Meprobomate, he was on pain medications, Codeine, Demerol, Methadone, he was on oral cortisone; he was on injected cortisone, he was on testosterone, he was on Nembutal for sleep. And on top of that he was getting injected sometimes six times a day, six places on his back, by the White House physician, with Novocain, Procaine, just to enable him to face the day.”
Whether Kenny or Larry knew or grasped the full picture of Jack’s illness in 1954 remains unclear. We know that Kenny became familiar with it later but kept it to himself. But in 1954 Bobby was a conduit. Jack and Kenny had not yet reached that level of trust in their relationship. Bobby called Kenny again around this time and said he had to come up and see him. “I talked to Bobby before and especially after the senator became ill and this thing had broken, and it was clear the damage had been done. Bobby came up to see me to discuss the senator’s position politically. By this time the dies had been cast; there wasn’t much any of us could do. Bobby’s involvement in that campaign was not at all, until Jack went into the hospital and the political damage was clear. Then he came up to see me to determine what if anything we could do to salvage the situation.”
In fairness, at this time, Kenny did not take a position, because when Bobby came up to see him and told him the entire background and completely explained Jack’s situation, he suddenly realized how very sick Jack Kennedy was.
“Clearly, I knew it was bad,” Kenny said, “but I never fully grasped the gravity until that moment. I realized when Bobby called and told me that they had just given him the last rites of the church.
“Suddenly,” Kenny said, “I was not particularly interested in his political situation, but rather his survival. This was January or February 1955. I talked to Bobby, who was in Rhode Island, Newport. I was so shocked, I could not believe it. I don’t even remember who called me, someone else in the family, who said Bobby was having a tough time and prompted me to call Bobby again. Then I was upset, having just got Bobby calmed down; I got a call from a newspaperman, who had called and said he had contacts at the hospital and that Senator Kennedy had been given the last rites. I was not happy with that call and told him where to go.”
Remember, at this time Kenny believed, as did many, that this was an adjustment, a minor injury, which had gone a bit awry, which is what Jack had told Kenny and Larry at the Ritz months before. That night, Kenny sat down with Helen and asked her what to do. How he should handle it.
“She told me that I must call Bobby again and say, in essence, what the hell is going on?
“I finally got through to him, but Bobby said he really didn’t know much more than we did. That it was true. He was given the last rites. But he is better now. He had a temperature of 104 or 105 degrees, and he almost died. I said, “My God, Bobby, I just did not realize it. I am so sorry. I did not realize it.
“Bobby said, ‘Yeah, it is okay now, none of us did, but it was a close thing, but he is okay now. He is over it now. They gave him the last rites, the entire family was called in, but amazingly he pulled through. He is a tough guy. It looks like he is going to pull through, but he is still a very sick guy. You could call him and talk to him about the political situation to cheer him up.
“I remember thinking, what? I doubt he wants to hear from me again just now. That is the first time I ever realized the extent of his sickness. I had no political thoughts at the moment. I was shocked. We had to try to be optimistic and hoped he would live; then, if he lived, that he could make a comeback into politics, but it did not look good.”
The political wise guys were saying, and Kenny and Larry now realized it was probably true, that, if he lived, he would not be walking again at a minimum. Kenny said, “If he had the temperatures of 104 and then 105, the back had been that bad, they had operated on it twice, and Bobby [said] that they had put a steel plate in, then it had caused another infection. They were hopeful they could get [Jack] out, but [Bobby] did not know for sure.”
“While the words were optimistic, the tone in his voice was not,” Kenny remembered. “I read between the lines . . . [that] whatever political future Jack Kennedy had was tentative at best; as far as getting into the maelstrom and brawls and the fights that were necessary to control the party, that Jack Kennedy was not capable of that. That quite frankly this might be the end of it right here; and possibly, if Jack Kennedy recovered, Bobby said they were hopeful he could be at least on crutches for the rest of his life, rather than a wheelchair. Bobby said that if that happened and he could use crutches that [we] might possibly be able to think about him running for Senate again, but even that was a long shot. He said simply he was not sure Jack would be physically up to it again.
“I am not sure I even raised the party issue or went through it; I had no thoughts up until the astonishing spring of that year that there would be any interest [in] Jack Kennedy in any future control of the Democratic Party or even his own political future. There was a total drumbeat that if he lived, he was not going to return to the Senate. There were stories almost every day that he was going to be a cripple for life, if he lived, and never run again. The politicians made sure the ‘He’s going to be a cripple for life’ stories were in the press at least ten times a day.”
If Kenny had hoped Jack’s illness would make other politicians sympathetic, he was wrong. Did his plight not make them at least a little sympathetic? For Jack’s enemies, it did not. His enemies almost exulted, because they saw Jack’s condition as a way in which he would be removed from the political scene without them having to defeat him.
Kenny recalled, “They wrote Jack off as finished and they were looking forward to the next fight and planning who would replace him in the Senate. Furcolo had already looked forward; he had made up his mind, and he had made a good run, and was going to run for governor. The stories were being planted—he was a great public relations guy—that an Italian could not be denied twice and this proved to be right. Kennedy could not be against him again since Kennedy was removed from the political scene now and in the future. There were no other candidates around. Murphy could not run again, and so from that moment on Furcolo was then a candidate and was the political force in politics for the governorship.”
Kenny felt sick. He’d known during that first event in Worcester, when he saw Jack in one unguarded moment, that the situation was graver than anyone in the Kennedy family would admit. He did not know any details at the time; he just knew the situation was bad. Based on his conversations with Jack, he had gotten a deepening sense of the problem but still did not have the full picture. Neither Bobby nor the father had filled him in completely. In the end, he felt it was up to Jack to decide what was and wasn’t his business.
He had his fears all along, but he brushed them aside. Jack seemed to recover each time his back pain flared up, so Kenny convinced himself, as no doubt did Joe Kennedy, Bobby, and other Kennedy family members, that Jack would rally. Kenny had begun to spend a lot of time with Dave Powers, in whom he found a kindred spirit.
For Dave, Kenny was a welcome friend, someone in whom he could confide about Jack’s health without fearing that it would not be kept confidential. Dave confirmed what Bobby had already said. It didn’t look good. Still, Kenny and Larry hoped for the best. Neither the Kennedy secretaries nor Jack’s constituents back home in Massachusetts knew anything about his health situation. And for political reasons, Kenny and Larry had no intention of enlightening them.
“We really do realize that we would be fortunate if Senator Kennedy ever came back,” Kenny confirmed to Helen. “And if he does, he would be at the bottom of his political power. The jockeying for the 1956 governorship had commenced and our vaunted Kennedy organization has neither a candidate for governor nor our political leader.”
Without Jack’s even tacit involvement in the state races, Kenny and Larry could go only so far.
As Kenny remembered it, “We did not appear to have a candidate, and if we did, it would probably have been very difficult for us to put him across, because we would have had to take on Foster Furcolo. That would have meant that any Irish candidate, and it would have to be an Irish candidate, would have split the Irish vote wide open and therefore could not be elected in 1956.”
The political elite in Massachusetts, ready to move in at a moment’s notice, had begun to smell a bit of blood in the water. Maybe they had been right the first time: This Kennedy kid did not have staying power. He was physically fragile, which made him and his organization vulnerable.
Kenny and Larry were good, but neither of them were Jack Kennedy, and until Jack was on his feet, assuming that ever happened, the Kennedy organization was headed nowhere. The one thing that worried Kenny and Larry the most, beyond Jack’s simple survival, was that they knew power abhorred a vacuum. If they could not move soon, all they had built since 1952 would be lost.
It was a low point, no question, and things only got worse when Dave confirmed another suspicion of Bobby’s. “There are real problems with his mental situation at this time,” Bobby had said. “He is deeply depressed. I am very worried.”
If Bobby and Dave were worried, that worried Kenny. It was Dave, not Kenny, who had spent the most time with Jack at this point. Kenny, a man of action rarely given to inward reflection, felt helpless before the rumors of Jack’s slipping mental health.
Kenny would upon occasion chat with Jack, mostly at Bobby’s or Dave’s request, trying to get some spark of interest out of him about the political situation in Massachusetts. “I had no idea what to say to him,” Kenny said, “except to say, look, we need you up here. We need you now. Often, he would then go off into other areas, and again, all I could do was listen, then try, mostly unsuccessfully, to bring him back to politics and the present.”
Helen suggested that just listening to him might be enough. Kenny wasn’t sure. He feared for Jack’s future, for their political future, if Jack didn’t make it. For the first time since jumping in full throttle behind Jack Kennedy’s political ambitions, things were beginning to slip out of Kenny’s control, a feeling he was both unfamiliar with and did not at all enjoy. All his political skill and toughness could not save Jack’s life or get Jack back on his feet or shake him out of this depression, if he did not want to be. So while receiving regular updates from Bobby and Dave, Kenny, like the rest of the Kennedy family, had to wait and hope for the best.
Jack Kennedy’s recovery had been miserably slow. But he seemed to find strength and even some solace in updates on his foundering political organization in Massachusetts. Kenny would talk to him more often about the political situation, but up until the spring of 1955, it remained a general concern whether or not Jack would be back. Rumors that he was up and walking would begin, then the next day there would be a setback and he would be bedridden once more.
“Here we were,” Kenny said later, “from the end of ’54 in this ‘valley of depressions.’ We had begun to create a pretty good Democratic organization of our own, but we recognized we had nowhere to go politically without the senator. The Kennedy organization was treading water.”
As Kenny said later, “We’d brought on some very good people. They found with us they could get to Jack Kennedy through Ken O’Donnell and Larry O’Brien, whom they felt some common bond with. Therefore, they strongly wanted to be with us, in case our candidate were to return to his full physical powers. We all certainly believed he had the potential to recoup his political fortunes should he return.”
The problem was, the longer he was out of the picture, the harder it would be for Kenny and Larry to hold on to this group of people and move forward. Eventually people would want to speak to the candidate directly. There would come a time when only Jack Kennedy himself, his presence, could hold the organization together.
The wait was longer than planned or anticipated, but in late spring 1955, as Kenny was headed out the door, the phone rang. His political fortunes were again about to turn. He stopped long enough to hear Helen laughing and joking with someone on the telephone before he dropped his briefcase and took the call. He had assumed by her teasing tone that it was Bobby. He was stunned but relieved when he picked up the receiver to hear Jack’s voice on the line.
“Thanks for keeping things moving,” was all he said. That was all that needed to be said; he was back and he had an agenda.
It took Kenny a moment to cover his surprise as Jack quickly asked for an update since their last conversation. “Pretty much where you left it, Senator,” Kenny explained. “We could not do much without you, frankly.”
Kenny gave Jack the latest overview. He could tell Jack was sharp, on his game.
“I am ready,” Jack said.
“Good,” was all Kenny said. He would have to ask Bobby later what had happened.
Later, when Kenny asked him, Bobby had been quiet and then said, “He lived. He made it. Then he realized, maybe he had made it for a reason. You’d have to ask him what changed.”
Kenny, not a man to pry, felt when the senator was ready, he’d tell him directly. On one level, the Kennedy family were very private people. Kenny felt maybe he owed them some semblance of privacy. There was time enough to hear what had happened, but what Kenny wanted Jack to focus on now was what could happen in the future with Jack at the helm. Jack seemed ready, albeit frustrated that more hadn’t been done in his absence. Somehow, perhaps because of the extra time on his hands, he had suddenly decided to build that Kennedy organization after all; that Kenny and Larry might just have been right. His political juices were again flowing.
Jack understood the delay, but now he wanted action. On a conference call later that same day, Jack told them of his plans. When he returned to Massachusetts, the first thing he wanted to do was have a political reunion of the Kennedy secretaries. This was good news.
Jack had recognized during his down period that he had a problem, and he made a couple of key decisions. He was going to take several strong steps. Proving he was healthy was the main step, but he also needed to find a candidate for ’56. Because of the advent of a convention system, which had not existed in ’52, Jack realized that unless he had a candidate to back in ’56, he would not have much influence at the convention. Also, he was already looking ahead toward ’58, and he knew he had to move fast. He had to solidify his forces, reintroducing himself to his most powerful constituents. To further this goal, he decided to have a clambake at his father’s house on the Cape in mid-June 1955.
The clambake, Jack explained, was going to be a political first. He wanted to use it as an opportunity to bring everyone together, all the political players in Massachusetts, for an afternoon at the Kennedy compound. “I want this to be a huge success.”
THE CLAMBAKE WAS billed as a reunion for the Kennedy secretaries, and the entire Massachusetts legislature was invited. It was the first of what remains to this day a Kennedy political tradition. From Kenny’s perspective, this event allowed the Kennedy organization to show that Jack was back in full form and ready to take charge of his organization. This was essential as they looked toward both the 1956 Democratic Convention the following summer and the 1958 Senate race.
Kenny had nodded, his political instinct kicking in. With a quick glance to the father, Kenny recognized the brilliance of Jack’s plan. “The event would consolidate the work that he and Larry had been doing in a vacuum for the last couple of years in the wilderness. With Jack, Jackie, and the compound center stage, it would immediately give the impression that Jack was the returning political hero. It would be by design to set the stage for the takeover of the Massachusetts Democratic Party and to sideline Furcolo all at once.
“I mean, come on,” Kenny had said to Helen, “after this event, if Jack was firing on all cylinders, Furcolo would go back to being second string.”
Helen had laughed. Personally, she had wondered aloud whether one event could do all that.
“But,” Kenny had explained, “the event and really not just the event, Jack’s presence and appearance of health and strength would convince the political doubters that Jack was back and ready for action. Jack personally would just tie the strings together of all the hard work and pieces we had put in place.”
In truth, Helen didn’t care that much how it was accomplished. She was just happy to see Kenny back in action. “Back on the field,” as she told Bobby with a laugh.
What struck Kenny the most about Jack’s appearance at the reception was that he no longer needed crutches. He was even able to play a little softball. In the end, Jack demonstrated without a doubt that he was back and able to take charge politically.
The event was a successful all-day affair. There were games, sailing, plenty of food, and plenty to drink. As much as Jack’s presence, his ability to shake hands and move without crutches or obvious pain relieved everybody who had been so concerned for him. What Kenny remembered the most from that day was that Jack still had the same vivid attraction for people. All the Kennedy people naturally loved him.
Kenny and Larry were also watching the professionals and the decision makers. Those were the people about whom Kenny and Larry were concerned now. Their reactions to Jack’s health and competence were what mattered the most.
“The state politicians loved him despite themselves,” Kenny recalled. “There he was after all these rumors about his health, walking around tanned and in his brightest form, and the professional politicians [who had written him off] were now chasing him around with their cameramen and trying to get a picture with Jack Kennedy. It was very clear to me at that moment that Jack Kennedy was a breath of fresh air and a shining light in politics to these people.”
With great relief, the Irish Brotherhood began to move the organization forward, knowing they once again had a leader at the helm. Kenny and Larry realized another critical point about the Kennedy organization that breezy afternoon in mid-June. They realized they had perhaps inadvertently kept some of these high-profile decision makers in the Democratic Party, Kennedy fans all, away from the senator and that it was now time to bring them in closer. It was evident that many of these people were thrilled to be at the Kennedy compound, excited to be in Jack’s presence.
“They in fact did want to be associated with him,” Kenny noted, “and some of them were excellent political fellows, though some of them were rogues, as they have in any party. But it was important for our political future and for the senator’s that if we were going to take the next step and get involved in the party, we should know them on an intimate, personal basis. We realized then that it was important that they should feel we were not snobs, that we did not look down at the ‘regulars’ in the political organization and in the legislature. We would like to work with them.” These regular political types had never been to the Kennedy compound as such, had never touched such glamour. Jack’s arrival electrified the event. They were delighted to be included along with their wives and their families.
With Jack’s successful return, the future of the Kennedy organization in Massachusetts was assured. No matter what Joe or Frank Morrissey did, no matter what Ted Sorensen did in Washington, Jack’s Irish Brotherhood now had a role to play.
“It was time to get to work,” as Kenny explained. “We felt what we had felt from the beginning. In the proper hands, this Kennedy organization, properly used, side by side with an office holder, and a powerful office holder such as Jack Kennedy, would place us in a commanding position within the state power structure.”
Jack, Kenny, Larry, Dave, and a reluctant Bobby Kennedy were now squarely looking toward Chicago and the Democratic Convention of 1956.
Kenny summed it up: “Jack Kennedy’s magic was as solid as it ever had been. He was on his feet. He was healthy again, physically and mentally. The great attraction of the candidate was on display, and the fear that he might not return, that siding with Jack Kennedy was a risk, was finally put to rest. Too many of these regular politicians who had eyed Jack with suspicion as an outsider, a rich kid, and a lightweight now saw something else. They saw their political future and the future of the party in Massachusetts. They knew now it was better to be on the winning side, and for the regulars that meant siding with Jack Kennedy. For the Brotherhood’s part, we accepted that Senator Kennedy may have hit bottom, but he had gotten back up. He had now a solid foundation from which to build forward, and that was our plan.” Given what Kenny learned later, and what we now truly know of Jack Kennedy’s illness and his literal fight to live, that he survived and decided to return to politics and pursue the presidency makes this story even more remarkable.
It was a dramatic, theatrical, unusual, and critical comeback. With Jack simply struggling to survive and Bob Murphy defeated, the political power structure had begun to seriously look to Foster Furcolo as the “up-and-coming politician,” Kenny noted. “Look,” he told Vanocur, “nobody was overly thrilled by him, but with Murphy’s defeat, Jack seemingly on the ropes, everyone was looking for somebody to lead the delegation. Seemed Furcolo was the man. He was an Italian; though he had been defeated once for governor, he figured, correctly as it turned out, he could not be defeated a second time.”
With Jack Kennedy’s return to the political arena, the Kennedy organization, such as it existed at the time, was back in action. “We realized both selfishly and in what we thought would be politically good for him [that] we had to take every step possible to maintain our contacts with the Kennedy organization. To preserve it as an entity in his absence and to in fact keep him viable in his absence and until he could or would reemerge. We had to, in fact, propagandize this organization and give the appearance to other politicians and the public that this was a cohesive, solid group and that we were responsive to Senator John Kennedy. That we spoke for him, acted for him, and as a matter of fact we were Senator John Kennedy’s agents in Massachusetts. We had no titles. We had no office. We had no direct authority and it was a very difficult task to perform. We received no help or encouragement from Washington. Occasionally, Jack would call me and it would be a general chat. If he wanted something done on a political basis, it was now done again through Frank Morrissey and communicated by the father.”
Kenny learned only later from Jack himself that he had during his illness made a mental decision to survive. He had reached a point where during illness you have to decide, am I going to fight this or am I going to give in. Once he decided to fight it, to make that comeback, then that meant committing completely to succeeding in politics. That meant a call to Kenny and Larry, because any politician worth a damn must have a successful team around him and a top-notch organization. Jack perhaps discussed this with his father or Jackie, but Kenny and Jack were still learning to trust each other. Kenny could say to Larry only that it certainly appeared to him that Jack had overcome some mental obstacle. Made some decision. Not an introspective man, Kenny was again hesitant to pry. Bobby had no real answers but did say, “I think he figured if he made it through this, he can make it through anything.”
In the fall of 1955, the success of the event was in the proverbial rearview mirror and the boys were looking to consolidate their power and get Jack control of the Massachusetts Democratic Party as they eyed the upcoming convention in Chicago in 1956. They intended to arrive in Chicago with Jack as the party leader.
“At the time,” Kenny laughed later, “none of us were even thinking of his running for the VP slot with Stevenson.” And years later, when Kenny would read about the “vaunted Kennedy organization,” he would laugh. “Organization?” He joked, “if that had existed we’d have been ready for the vice presidential race in ’56, we’d have run with Stevenson, lost, and Jack’s whole career would have been over. Larry and I would have been the biggest political bums in the world!”
By early fall, “the senator understood what we were doing. The national situation had begun to emerge and he had made his decision in that regard. He knew he was looking nationally and now was looking for an opportunity. The state committee has now begun to have fights. John McCormack and Paul Dever had discovered it was a paper tiger. Kennedy was not interested, because he was looking toward national office. Whatever he’d come through, he had made the decision, he was going national,” Kenny said.
Quite apart from Jack Kennedy’s political aspirations, Speaker McCormack made the decision to take over the state committee. McCormack’s people had sensed that there was an area of power that was vacant here. It was evident that again the senator had taken a pass, and so McCormack decided that he would have his guys move in.
Dick Maguire had come over to the Kennedy organization from Bob Murphy’s campaign. Kenny later teased, “Well, Murphy may have lost, but we won, because we got Dick Maguire.” With each new acquisition, Kenny and Larry saw themselves building toward a national run, though they did not say that directly to Jack Kennedy. They felt it was unnecessary, since they knew instinctively they were acting at his behest and carrying out his wishes.
Speaker McCormack and allies’ reasons for moving in were slightly different than ours—that is OBrien, O’Donnell, and Maguire. “The reason was that the speaker’s son Eddie McCormack was now making his move into politics and they want to nominate him for Massachusetts attorney general,” Kenny explained. “As I have said, those who are interested in becoming attorney general are rather peculiar people. They are all lawyers. There are other forces of politics and the fringe groups are very interested in who becomes attorney general. On the face of it, [Eddie McCormack] had a pretty good background. Graduated from Annapolis, Boston University Law School, lawyer. He had run for the city council of Boston, he was one of nine, but he always ran near the top or at the top, as anyone named McCormack would.
“Looking back,” Kenny said, “in fact, our position before Jack’s return at this time was at best a tenuous one and, as I say, a propaganda one, to maintain our position and the appearance of a political organization to the politicians. Now, I’m talking about those generally interested in the next gubernatorial or Senate fight. We were selfish to some degree to maintain this position. We also felt it would be good for him in the long run, even if at the moment he was largely removed.”
Kenny and Larry agreed. “There were two parts to this,” Kenny said. “My feeling was that Mr. Kennedy did not want his son embroiled in what he considered the old Irish fights and had other concerns about his son at the moment. He thought getting into those contests would only further weaken him politically and he had nothing to gain by them. He also felt that his control or hold of a state organization which was essentially defunct did him no good.” In truth, Joe believed even when it acted, the state organization had little effect. The Democratic Party in Massachusetts had historically been a party of individuals: the Curley organization, the Dever organization, the Tobin organization, and now the Kennedy organization.
The truth was—and Kenny guessed as much—that Joe Kennedy was also intelligent enough to realize that “O’Donnell and O’Brien have a vested interest in being associated with the Kennedys; perhaps they want something for themselves. So they probably will be taking some actions in Massachusetts, which will be in their own selfish interests but might not be in the interests of Jack Kennedy. [Jack] should be very careful in what actions they did take. Make sure those actions were known to [Jack] and were not taken without [Jack’s] knowledge.”
Jack had dismissed his father’s advice. He was well aware of what O’Donnell and O’Brien were doing. Jack just needed to be able to disavow anything should it go wrong. Should it work, then Jack would walk into the convention as political leader.
Kenny noted, “I always had the feeling that Mr. Kennedy was against Jack’s further involvement and always felt that [Joe Kennedy] believed O’Donnell and O’Brien were pushing themselves and thinking of only themselves.”
“Don’t be used,” Joe warned his son.
“Mr. Kennedy,” Kenny said, “encouraged by those like Morrissey, felt we were thinking of our own personal ambitions, problems, and through this organization and the Kennedy association were trying to advance our own goals, our own political careers, or become the conduit for Kennedy to the candidate for governor, who would then reward us in some fashion with a job, etc. It was his firm belief by this time that our views and judgments did not coincide with the interests of his son Senator Kennedy. I think the senator assumed we were thinking of ourselves, and, in fairness, the Kennedys always think of themselves and take care of themselves first. And they don’t expect anyone else to be much different. That would not be totally untrue.”
With that in mind, Joe watched their actions with some care, though at the same time, as Kenny noted, “Whatever actions we took to maintain the Kennedy organization and to maintain our positions in the hierarchy of the party, without hurting him, were to his advantage.”
This was all going on in the background when, with ’56 and the Chicago Democratic Convention looming, Kenny and Larry decided to make the move to take over the Massachusetts Democratic Party with a shrewd, savvy political operator by the name of John “Pat” Lynch.
JACK’S FATHER HAD wanted Jack to stay out of the fight for control of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, but pushed by circumstances and hard sells by Kenny and Larry, Jack had jumped in with the same competitive spirit he would demonstrate in Chicago. He ended up in control of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, putting Lynch in charge. He had not really wanted Lynch, but his choices had been limited.
Lynch was the longtime mayor of Somerville. He seemed exactly the type of old-school politician that Jack was determined to defeat. When Kenny brought Lynch in to meet Jack, it was priceless when Jack looked at Kenny as if Kenny had lost his mind. Lynch was a small, bald-headed Irishman who wore a wide-brimmed felt hat and a velvet collar typical of Boston Irish politicians. He looked, Kenny later joked, like a “fifty-five-year-old leprechaun” smoking a cigar.
Kenny chuckled to himself as he saw the “look of shock on Jack’s face.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jack whispered to Kenny.
No. Kenny was not kidding. Lynch may have been old-school, but he was a political realist and he would play ball Jack’s way, and that was exactly what they needed. Jack had reluctantly agreed. In the end, Lynch was elected and Jack uneasily and perhaps somewhat unhappily took the reins of the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
“I felt,” Jack later told Bobby, “like I needed to take a shower when the battle was over.”
Nevertheless, it had put Jack front and center in national politics and he had emerged as a force to be reckoned with. Stevenson and his team had watched Jack’s growing visibility and power with great interest, sensing that they might be able to use Jack’s new prominence and popularity to help the Democratic ticket.