The man who dares to defy Speaker Finneran

Part 3

by Michael Crowley

The trouble started in the spring of last year, when then-Speaker Flaherty admitted to tax and ethics violations and announced he was resigning the speakership. Flaherty's natural successor was Richard Voke, the House majority leader from Chelsea -- a close ally of Hodgkins. But Finneran, then House Ways and Means chairman, also went for the job, and a bloody battle ensued. Voke had far more support among Democrats, and was expected to win. But the more conservative Finneran made a daring end run, garnering the votes of the House's 35 Republicans and capturing the speakership on April 9.

That left Hodgkins in deep trouble. He'd fought feverishly for Richie Voke, and when Finneran triumphed, Hodgkins became an instant symbol of political ruin. Finneran stripped him of his committee chairmanship -- every Voke backer would eventually suffer a similar fate -- and Hodgkins was stuffed into a tiny basement office to begin his political exile.

With nothing left to lose, Hodgkins carried on the fight. From the first days of Finneran's tenure, while many supporters of Voke -- who has since left politics -- were groveling for forgiveness, Hodgkins became a defiant and rancorous presence.

"Never has such petty vindictiveness fallen upon the members of this chamber," Hodgkins blared on the House floor after Finneran purged several Voke supporters from plum committee slots just weeks after his election.

More dramatic was a showdown on the hectic final day of last year's session. Hodgkins and an ally, Representative Joe McIntyre (D-New Bedford), tried to slow down hasty action on a variety of bills, making repeated objections and attempting to speak from the floor. But Finneran refused to recognize the shouting legislators -- "a break in decorum," as the magazine CommonWealth put it last winter, "that had even the old-timers in the press gallery looking on with amazement." (That sort of dueling continues to this day, as captured in amusingly dry parliamentary-speak by a July 15 State House News Service transcript of House proceedings: At 2:45 p.m., the House recessed with the intention of reconvening at 3:30 p.m. Rep. Hodgkins repeatedly shouted for recognition as the speaker put the House into recess.)

There was more. In the fall, after the Boston Globe reported two instances when it appeared Finneran might have intervened politically for clients of his law firm, Hodgkins filed an ethics complaint against the Speaker. The House Ethics Committee looked into one of the charges but took no action. And fewer than six months after Finneran's election, Hodgkins began talking publicly about a possible coup in January 1997. That fanciful plan fizzled quickly, but when January came and the House conducted its routine re-election of the sitting Speaker, Hodgkins stubbornly stood alone among his Democratic colleagues in simply voting "present."

Although he is just one of 20 to 30 progressives who backed Voke and who are disturbed by Finneran's autocratic style, by this time Hodgkins had so clearly established himself as Finneran Enemy Number One that any article about the Speaker's regime invariably contained a blast from "frequent Finneran critic Chris Hodgkins." He even became a running joke on the House floor. In his going-away speech last November, Charlie Flaherty recited a limerick in which Finneran returns from a production of The Nutcracker and exclaims, "It was quite a sight. But I listen to Chris Hodgkins all day. Why should I listen to him at night?"

This role of anti-Speaker would have been impossible to imagine just two years ago, but it's one Hodgkins professes to love. "I know that it angers him to have opposition," Hodgkins says of the Speaker. "He gets that vein in his neck and that forehead of his when I walk through the rostrum."

Part 4

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