Projo Politics Blog

Pastore avoided the entreaties of Italian-American pols for jobs and patronage. He once said he didn't want to be known as the "Italian senator''; he said he sought to be "everybody's senator.''

Ruth Morgenthau, his biographer, wrote, `"He felt he was at the forefront of the coming of age of Italian-Americans and that he had a responsibility to carry himself above the seamier aspects of ward politics. He sensed that as a son of immigrants he had a responsibility to live free of scandal because he would be seen as an example of all those who shared his ethnic heritage.''

Reed, of Irish-American ancestry, is known to be quite cautious about home state imbroglios. Democrats were not too happy several years back when Reed bypassed Bill Lynch, the Democratic state chairman, to tap Margaret Curran, a protege of Republican governor Lincoln Almond, for U.S. Attorney.

Reed and Pastore are the only Roman Catholics and the only men from modest backgrounds to represent Rhode Island in the Senate in the last half-century, a time when blue-collar voters here elected such WASP bluebloods as the two Chafees -- John Chafee and his son, Lincoln Chafee -- Claiborne Pell and Sheldon Whitehouse.

On Sunday, the usual crowd of 1,200 jammed the cavernous Rhodes for Reed's 19th annual May breakfast of eggs, bacon, home fries, coffee and politics. Everyone who is anybody in the state's Democratic Party pantheon was there -- Patrick Kennedy, Jim Langevin and Sheldon Whitehouse all spoke -- as well as a number of prominent Rhode Islanders better known for philanthropic or business leadership.
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A Reed crowd is always diverse; a table of bikers here, a group of from the Liberian community, the clutch from the St. Bart's Club in Silver Lake. The Democratic coalition, in all its florid fragility, is well-ensconced at a Reed event. The surnames involved in the speaking program and sitting in the front rows spill from the tongue: Britto, O'Neill, Bronstein, Fazzano, Igliozzi -- the poetry of the Democratic Party from Al Smith to LBJ.

There was one very conspicuous exception -- no Roman Catholic clergy took part in the event celebrating the reelection bid of the state's most prominent Roman Catholic political figure. (Bishop Thomas J. Tobin is never pleased with Catholic elected officials who deviate from the church's anti-abortion views). Rev. Donald Anderson, executive minister of the R.I. State Council of Churches and a Protestant, led the prayers.

Despite the cool response from his church (Reed is a regular parishioner at St. Michael's parish on Providence's south side), the senator is electorally inpregnable for many reasopns, not the least of which is the way he weaves his biography into activist liberalism, the secular creed of Democratic Party from FDR until it crashed into the conservative ascendancy under Reagan.

Reed is also very good at tying his philosophy to examples from the ministry of Jesus Christ, such as the Gospel According to Luke and the Sermon on the Mount.

"I am a very fortunate son of Rhode Island,'' Reed, 58, said in his speech. He recounted his working-class roots in Cranston -- his father was a school custodian -- and talked about how families had more confidence in their future.

Reed was raised at a time of strong faith in the public sphere in Rhode Island and the nation. There was strong support for public schools, parks, roads and colleges. Reed took advantage of opportunities, heading off to West Point, served as an officer in the U.S. Army and won a degree from Harvard Law School.

Here is where Reed had things a bit easier than Pastore: Pastore hailed from a very poor neighborhood, Federal Hill, which his biographer termed a bastion of squalor and radical politics. The promising young son of immigrants did well at Classical High School and was admitted to Brown University, but never attended because he couldn't afford it. He later won a law degree from a night school, which was permitted in the early years of the 20th century.

By the time Reed came of age, men such as Pastore and Pell had put in place federal programs that ensured that promising young people of modest means would not be shut out of college because they were not well-born.

Reed never faced the kind of discrimination and ethnic exclusion that dogged Pastore. John Kennedy's election in 1960 ended the era of Irish exclusion from the hierarchy of American life and politics. Reed worked as a banking lawyer at Edwards & Angell, but never stuck around long enough to make partner. His sights were set on politics.

Another similarity: Both Reed and Pastore began their careers with seats in the General Assembly, Pastore in the dark Depression years of the 1930s and Reed in the 1980s.

The divisions of the 1960s continue to nip at the Democrats, but it is not possible to damage Reed with the usual wedge issues of weed, sex and Woodstock. Sheldon Whitehouse was the
subject of how-many-lines-did-you snort-at-Yale ads when he ran against Republican Nancy Mayer for attorney general in the 1990s, but the same could never be hurled at Reed, who spent his youth in the army and at West Point and eventually won two graduate degrees from Harvard.

Reed will never be a noted orator like Pastore, whose doomsday-deep voice never needed amplification from the front of a noisy union hall. Unlike Reed, Pastore had his political education at a time before television, when speaking well from the back of a flatbed truck was an asset.

Yet Reed has become an effective speaker, a fixture on television interview shows, delivering his message in an understated, yet forceful, manner.

Pastore thought his highest calling was to be a Rhode Island senator. Reed sought Sunday to quell speculation that he might be tabbed to be defense secretary in a future Democratic administration, if there is one.

"It is my privilege and honor to be your senator,'' Reed said to cheers. ``There is no other job I want.''

One other thing these two vertically-challenged Democrats have in common: Pastore never lost an election. Neither has Reed. Don't expect Rhode Island's anemic Republican Party to field a candidate that can break Reed's streak this year.