The graduate

Part 2

Talking Politics by Michael Crowley

At this time last year, Jim McGovern was doomed. Or so went the conventional political wisdom, which had already consigned the candidate to footnotedom. The polls supported that view for almost the entire campaign.

There were good reasons to think McGovern would be toast. He was, unfashionably, a Washington insider. And the people of the largely working-class Third District, which is politically moderate at best, hadn't seen such a liberal since the New Deal.

Jim McGovern, 37, was born and raised in Worcester, where his parents still run a package store. But he left Massachusetts in 1977 for Washington's American University and a career in politics. During college he worked in the office of South Dakota's Senator George McGovern (no relation), a legendary pillar of liberalism. The young McGovern was inspired by the elder, and managed his 1984 presidential campaign in Massachusetts. By 1982, he had also begun working for another storied figure: Representative Joe Moakley, the Southie-based leader of the state congressional delegation.

Congressional aides are typically invisible, but as he rose to become Moakley's top aide, McGovern established a high profile of his own in Washington. He won almost equal credit with Moakley for a nationally hailed investigation into the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests and two lay women in El Salvador, which generated enough outrage to end US aid to the country.

By 1994 McGovern was ready for his own platform, but lost a bid for Blute's seat in the Democratic primary. Even after wining the primary two years later, McGovern was dismissed as too liberal for the Massachusetts Third District, a gerrymandered work of art that begins north of Worcester and winds southward, past Attleboro, to Fall River and down to the coast at Buzzard's Bay. Although Worcester and Fall River are heavily Democratic, many of those Democrats are blue-collar, pro-life Catholics. The surrounding areas are loaded with Republicans and suburban independents, and the net political sensibility is moderate at best. Indeed, every major paper in the district endorsed Blute.

Blute was a pro-life, pro-business conservative swept into office as part of the 1994 Republican revolution, and McGovern relentlessly pounded him as a radical pawn of Newt Gingrich. "If you wouldn't vote for Newt, why would you ever vote for Blute?" asked McGovern's memorable campaign slogan. Boosted by Democratic turnout and the weakness of the Dole ticket, McGovern prevailed 53 to 45 percent.

During the campaign McGovern was bashed some for being a Capitol insider. But he says his experience under Moakley, an all-time master at working the rules, amendments, and conference committees, makes him more effective than most freshmen.

"I know this place," he says. "I know how everything works. I know where all the bodies are buried."

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