Boss Lane's Political Machine

I have long amused myself with the supposition that I am a political intellectual, far removed from the hugger-mugger of politics in the urban trenches. Yet, if I am to be totally honest with myself (not that I don't mind lying through my teeth to the rest of you, as witness the many enlightening "Ask Mr. Tom" solutions), I have to admit, there was a time I too got my hands dirty-in fact, filthy-in the smarmy world of local politics.

I now live in Maryland-the crabs state, as some would call it. Back in 1974, I made the commonweal of Penn's Sylvania my home, specifically, Philadelphia. As some of you may recall from the true tale, My Lucky Break, I spent the 1974-75 school year teaching in that city's public school system.

The arch-enemy of the Teacher's Union, to say nothing of minorities, liberals and people who liked to fuss about corruption, was His Honor, the mayor, Frank Rizzo. Rizzo first came to power at the end of the racial turmoil that engulfed so many American cities in the late 1960s. His stirring campaign promise, the first time he ran, was that he would "make Attila the Hun look like a faggot." That was his...um...subtle way of saying he was going to turn his cops loose on the people whose name he couldn't invoke because his advisors had convinced him not to use "the N-word" in public.

Rizzo had tried, unsuccessfully, to break the teachers' union the year before I became a member. Now, I am not, by any means, saying the teachers' union was a perfect organization, crusading for truth, justice and the American way, but, if you were part of it and had any say-so in the matter, you would probably just as soon not be broken.

Okay, enough background on the late Mr. Rizzo. If I were to close by saying at least one kind thing about him, I would note that Willie Goode was worse. How's that for fair and balanced?

As it happened, Mayor Rizzo was up for re-election in 1974. He had not yet switched sides, so he was still, nominally, a Democrat.

I was new to the city, having lived in Ohio just prior to and after my stint in the army. I realized that, as was the case with most urban centers, the election, particularly for mayor, was effectively the Democratic primary. I quickly marched myself over to my nearest registration site and signed myself up as a card-portaging Democrat, Philly Chapter.

On the way back, I looked in on my brother and his friend. They are now entering or about to enter their seventh decade, but, back then, they were not quite sure yet whether or not they were hippies.

"Where have you been?" one of them wanted to know.

"I've just been to register," I told them, "so I can vote in the primary."

"Right, like that's going to make any difference."

I used all my philosophical wiles to explain the benefits of participatory democracy and that, if they didn't register, they couldn't vote for Lou Hill to overthrow the Rizzo regime, because the Republican, Sir Topham Hatt, or whatever the guy's name was, sure wasn't going to get elected.

It was a hard sell. To tell you the truth, none of us knew much about Lou Hill. On top of that, his campaign poster wasn't all that inspiring. I could see his team putting it together:

"Hold on, Pete, I just found a shot where, at least, he's not drooling on his tie."

"Great, let's go with that one."

Yet for all my reasoned discourse on the subject, my audience only got that I was a fool and a tool for buying into a corrupt system. At some point, not too much further into the discussion, I decided to cut my losses and give Tom the philosopher a greatly-needed rest. It was time for Boss Lane to crank up his political machine.

"Look, guys," I explained to them. "If you go and register with the Democrats and vote for this guy, Lou Hill, I'll buy yez a beer."

That sealed the deal. The next thing I knew I was swilling beer with two newly-registered Democrats. The machine was rolling and taking no prisoners along the way.

In the days to follow, I would spend a few evenings bothering other Democrats on the phone as a volunteer for Hill, before I realized I was violating the Golden Rule, and stopped, then and ever after. Sorry, but I don't like being pestered on the phone, for anything.

Still, I had done what I set out to do: throw the weight of Boss Lane's machine behind the challenger. The primary was coming up, and I knew my troops would do the right thing.

The morning after the primary, as my radio woke me up for another day of school, I learned the result. The man who would be Attila the Hun's buttboy won, but it was a pyrrhic victory indeed: Frank Rizzo carried the primary by a scant 60,000 votes instead of the 60,003 he and his cronies had so smugly been counting on.

Sources

Own experience

The Philadelphia Democratic Primary Election of 1974