John F. Fitzgerald - Political Life

Political Life

Fitzgerald was elected to Boston's Common Council in 1891. In 1892, he became a member of the Massachusetts Senate, and in 1894, he was elected to Congress for the 9th district, serving from 1895 to 1901. In 1906, Fitzgerald was elected Mayor of Boston, becoming the first American-born Irish-Catholic to be elected to that office. Fitzgerald served as mayor of Boston from 1906 to 1908, was defeated for re-election, but returned to the office again from 1910 to 1914.

Of his stylish manner, Robert Dallek wrote: "He was a natural politician—a charming, impish, affable lover of people... . His warmth of character earned him yet another nickname, "Honey Fitz," and he gained a reputation as the only politician who could sing "Sweet Adeline" sober and get away with it. A pixie-like character with florid face, bright eyes, and sandy hair, he was a showman who could have had a career in vaudeville. But politics, with all the brokering that went into arranging alliances and the hoopla that went into campaigning, was his calling. A verse of the day ran: 'Honey Fitz can talk you blind / on any subject you can find / Fish and fishing, motor boats / Railroads, streetcars, getting votes.' His gift of gab became known as Fitzblarney, and his followers as "dearos," a shortened version of his description of his district as 'the dear old North End.'"

Early in his first term as Boston's mayor, Fitzgerald formulated a plan to revitalize the commercial importance of the city. Using the slogan "A bigger, busier and better Boston", Fitzgerald was able to persuade business and the Massachusetts legislature to invest $9,000,000 for improvements to the port by 1912. Within a year, the investments began to pay off in the form of new port traffic to and from Europe.

He was for years the most prominent political figure in the city of Boston, where Patrick J. Kennedy was a more behind-the-scenes Democratic Party figure. P. J. Kennedy opposed Fitzgerald when the latter first ran for mayor, but they later became allies. In 1914, these two powerful political families (Kennedy and Fitzgerald) were united when Patrick Kennedy's only son Joe married Fitzgerald's eldest daughter Rose.

From March 4, 1919, to October 23, 1919, he again served in Congress, now for the 10th district, until Peter F. Tague successfully contested the election. Fitzgerald was an unsuccessful candidate for the offices of Senator in 1916 and Governor in 1922. His opponent for the Senate was Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. In his later years, Fitzgerald focused on his business interests and on honing the political instincts of his daughter Rose's promising sons. In 1946, when John F. Kennedy decided to run for Congress, 83-year-old "Honey Fitz" helped him plan his campaign strategy. At the victory celebration, Fitzgerald danced an Irish jig, sang "Sweet Adeline," and predicted that his grandson would someday occupy the White House. Shortly after his election to the presidency, John F. Kennedy renamed the presidential yacht the Honey Fitz in honor of his maternal grandfather.

On October 2, 1950, Fitzgerald died in Boston at the age of eighty-seven. His funeral was one of the largest in the city's history. President Harry S. Truman sent his sympathies and Fitzgerald's pallbearers included U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., U.S. Senator Leverett Saltonstall (the grandson of the man who had given "Honey Fitz" his first job), U.S. Speaker of the House John McCormack, Massachusetts Speaker of the House Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, and former Boston Mayor and Massachusetts Governor James Michael Curley. As "Honey Fitz" was carried to his final rest from Holy Cross Cathedral to St. Joseph's Cemetery in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, a crowd of thousands who had gathered along the streets sang "Sweet Adeline". Interestingly, in 1952, Fitzgerald's grandson and namesake John F. Kennedy defeated Lodge's grandson and namesake Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. for the same seat. Furthermore, in 1960, Lodge, Jr. was the unsuccessful U.S. Vice-Presidential candidate on the Republican ticket, which lost to Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

The official name for the Central Artery highway in Boston was The John F. Fitzgerald Expressway, until it was torn down in the 1990s as part of Boston's "Big Dig" project which eliminated the Central Artery and replaced it with a tunnel. The resulting greenway above the tunnel where the expressway had been was named for Fitzgerald's daughter as the "Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway".