James Michael Curley - Return To Congress

Return To Congress

In 1942, however, Curley managed to revive his faltering career by returning to Congress, serving from 1943 to 1947, this time in the 11th district. In defeating his liberal opponent Thomas H. Eliot, a former New Deal attorney with an exemplary voting record on behalf of the Roosevelt administration in the Democratic party primary. Eliot was the son of a Unitarian minister and grandson of Harvard president Charles Eliot and Curley based his campaign on appeals to ethnic, class and religious bigotry against the well to do White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Yankee Eliot. Ultimately, Curley saw an opening in breaking the lock of ethnic politics in the State with the spectre of growing communist influence. In a quote from a campaign speech which has famously entered Boston political lore, Curley raised the specter of Communist leanings in his opponent saying, "There is more Americanism in one half of Jim Curley's ass than in that pink body of Tom Eliot." Thus, despite his long proven corrupting influence and antagonism toward the state's native Yankee population, Curley managed to win over substantial numbers of them, winning the election easily. During the term he compiled a voting record that matched his former opponent's in support of the Roosevelt administration's social agenda.