The man who dares to defy Speaker Finneran

Chris Hodgkins is leading a lonely crusade against autocratic House Speaker Tom Finneran. Is he democracy's last hope -- or a bitter self-promoter?

by Michael Crowley

For Chris Hodgkins, life as a pariah is at least good for a few laughs.

Earlier this year Hodgkins, a Democratic state rep from Lee, was strolling down a third-floor State House hallway near the office of House Speaker Tom Finneran when he spotted a prominent Beacon Hill lobbyist headed his way. The two were on course to meet near Finneran's door, but the lobbyist did a funny thing. A few feet before he would have encountered Hodgkins, he ducked around a corner.

"Geez, what're you doing in here?" Hodgkins said with sarcastic delight as he popped his head around the corner into the empty, bathroom-size cul-de-sac where the lobbyist now found himself. The answer, of course, was obvious: hiding. This lobbyist knew that if you're worried about what Tom Finneran thinks of you, you don't risk letting him see you with Chris Hodgkins.

Over the past year and a half, Hodgkins -- once a powerful State House insider -- has grown accustomed to scenes like these. "They're afraid up here," he says. "Let's say there was a fundraiser and I was there talking to my colleagues, and Finneran walked into the room." Before long, he says, "I'm holding that beer by myself."

These lonely moments illustrate the strange contradictions of Chris Hodgkins's political life. Though he is largely powerless and often ostracized, he is nevertheless one of Beacon Hill's most visible figures. Combining media savvy with a veteran's parliamentary wiles, Hodgkins has waged a one-man guerrilla war against Tom Finneran's autocratic excesses -- a war that culminated this summer with a showdown over a package of pay raises Finneran hopes to win for his House allies. Some colleagues say Hodgkins -- the only Democrat not to vote for Finneran's re-election as Speaker in January -- is throwing a sustained tantrum over his political defeats. But it is telling that he has stirred such a commotion, given that his tactics would once have been viewed as routine State House dogfighting. Chris Hodgkins wouldn't be such a Beacon Hill phenomenon if the rest of the House hadn't fallen silent under Tom Finneran.

"Chris is the single most important voice in the State House," a Democratic consultant says. "He's the only one who has not kowtowed to Finneran. An endemic sickness has developed at the State House. People are terrified to speak out. People have been silenced by jobs and dollars, as well as fear, into taking a legislative body that is supposed to be a place where people take each other on and freezing it into a very scary silence."

"There has been a conspiracy of silence," echoes Representative Steven Angelo (D-Saugus), a House veteran who sees Hodgkins as filling the opposition role the Republicans have abdicated. "I think Chris Hodgkins has probably earned the minority leader's pay over the past year and a half."

"I might be the opposition of one," Hodgkins says. "But if I could count every pat on the back as a vote, I might be Speaker."

Part 2

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.