By Lawrence Henry on 10.14.02 @ 12:02AM
A new breed of politician in a state that doesn't know how much it likes conservative ideas.
I got an earful of North Andover, Massachusetts politics while I
was driving around with my realtor, Rosemary Smedile. Rosemary is
chairman of the North Andover Board of Selectmen, and in the most
recent at-large election, won her seat, along with our old friend
Wendy Wakeman and a Republican colleague Rosemary kept mentioning,
Jim Xenakis.
Call it political profiling. As Rosemary mentioned Jim, I kept
picturing a man in his fifties. Then we stopped for doughnuts and
coffee at a local convenience store, and I met Jim, whose family
owns the store. He's a sharp, vital young man of 24. Last week, we
had a long talk about how Jim got into Massachusetts politics, and
about the issues that made him a Republican.
For Jim, it started in fifth grade, in 1988, with a visit to his
school by then state representative Peter Torkildsen, a Republican.
Jim asked Torkildsen a pointed question at that visit, contrasting
college costs with the costs of keeping prisoners in state
penitentiaries. At later meetings, Torkildsen, displaying the
natural politician's uncanny memory for names and faces, recognized
Jim, and Jim eventually got involved in a series of Torkildsen
campaigns. In the first, in 1992, Torkildsen and Peter Blute (now a
morning talk show host on WRKO), both Republicans, won two out of
the ten Congressional seats in the Massachusetts delegation.
By the time the 1996 campaign rolled around, Jim Xenakis had
become a seasoned political operative.
"I had joined the Republican town committee," Jim recalls. "The
day I registered, I registered as a Republican. It just made sense
to me."
By 1998, a political shuffle gave Jim his own chance at elective
office. David Torrisi, a Democrat, left the Board of Selectmen to
run for state representative. Local people kept asking Jim why he
himself didn't run for the open seat. He had the connections and
the help he needed. He was chairman of the Northeastern University
Republican club. When he threw his hat in the ring, he sent out a
fundraising letter, and got his second contribution from Governor
Paul Celluci. (Jim had been a Celluci delegate at the most recent
Republican convention.)
"That became public information, and lent my candidacy a lot of
credibility," Jim recalls.
In the election, Jim finished seven votes out of the top
vote-getting slot, this in a six-way contest for two open seats. He
was 20 years old at the time. The victory got him a lot of
attention, including interview requests from television and radio
shows as far away as New York and Chicago.
Jim has won re-election, and is now a solid fixture on the North
Andover political scene. But what of being a Republican in a state
so thoroughly dominated by Democrats?
Republicans in Massachusetts, he says, have "significant
challenges. We are obviously faced with a three-to-one disadvantage
in enrollment numbers. The party really needs to unify and build a
farm team of candidates, not necessarily to work from the top of
the ticket down every year." That farm team of mayors, council
members, selectmen, and state reps, says Jim, are "going to be your
candidates for Congress in the future. If you start controlling the
dialogue at the local level, you can work your way up over time. It
isn't going to happen overnight."
That sounds like a solid analysis, but, as Jim's fellow
selectman, Wendy Wakeman, a veteran political consultant, points
out, "In fact, it's controversial. It's not the strategy the state
party is pursuing. In the overall picture of Massachusetts
politics, there's a real battle for the heart of the party" between
the people who want to keep electing a governor, and the others who
say that the Republican governors (Weld, Celluci, Swift) "have let
the rest of the party go to hell, and that we need to concentrate
on a broader array of people."
"This is obviously not a Republican state, but we are a
conservative state," Jim explains. "Ask anybody about taxation
policy, about government regulation, about the death penalty, about
truth in sentencing, about the military, and you'll find that
Massachusetts is a fairly conservative state.
"Democrats have had a stronghold in socializing people," as Jim
acknowledges. "My grandmother is one of the most conservative
people you'll ever meet, but she has never voted for a
Republican."
Ultimately, it comes down to the personal. Jim, for example, got
the endorsement of the firefighters in North Andover for his first
election -- and police, firemen, and teachers are the three
heftiest Democrat interest groups in the state. How did he do it?
"I asked," he says. "When I spoke to them, I told them I would
approach their issues in a spirit of fairness -- not pro labor or
pro management." Since being in office, Jim has picked up the
support of the local police, too.
Wendy Wakeman puts it in simpler terms. "Jim's a nice young guy,
and the firefighters are nice young guys." And should Jim run for
state rep or even for Congress someday, those firefighters and
policemen -- and, one presumes, Jim's grandmother -- won't look at
the ticket and say, "No, I'm not going to vote for a Republican."
They'll say, "Hey, there's Jim."
topics:
Television, Military
