he august chamber of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, with its historic mural, polished wood paneling, and sacred cod hanging from the ceiling, has an air of stolid permanence. The legendary Bulfinch built it, the icons Harrison Gray Otis, Leverett Saltonstall, and Tip O'Neill occupied it. In the midst of this ghostly mustiness, the chamber's newest master seems a bit out of place. Thomas M. Finneran, BA'73, Speaker of the House since April, is too mercurial, too good-humored . . . too full of life.
Then Finneran takes charge, and suddenly the chamber seems his completely. He bursts from his office through a hidden doorway and charges down the blue carpeted ramp to a spot in front of several hundred people. A short, fit-looking man with twinkling eyes, balding pate, and the face of an altar boy, Finneran is memorable: a rocket of human energy, emanating heat and light.
"Hiya, Mistah Speakah. How ahyadoin?" asks Representative Kevin Honan, a Brighton Democrat who practically trips running down the aisle to grab the Speaker's hand in a bone-crunching grip. Pumping Finneran's hand up and down, slapping his back, Honan smiles obsequiously, perhaps hoping Finneran might forget that Honan voted against him for Speaker six months before. A stream of well-wishers follows Honan, the faithful and faithless who come to pay homage to power.
The event at hand is the swearing-in of Robert Rufo, the outgoing Suffolk County sheriff, as a judge. Finneran gavels the meeting to order. He makes a few funny remarks, speaking extemporaneously. He is at ease, a consummate extrovert. He then turns the proceedings over to the sheriff of Pittsfield, Carmen Marciano, a friend of Rufo.
"Would all the sheriffs of the Commonwealth please stand?" booms Marciano, obviously delighted to be on the Speaker's rostrum with Finneran and Governor William Weld.
"Would all Mr. Rufo's relatives please rise and be recognized?" Marciano asks.
"Would the Suffolk County district attorney please stand?"
"Would the chaplain of the Suffolk County jail please rise and be recognized?" Marciano drones on.
Finally he introduces Governor Weld, who quickly swears in Rufo. When the deed is concluded, Marciano leaps up again, intent on resuming his role as master of ceremonies.
Finneran-who has joined in the general hilarity and seems to be having a wonderful time-rises suddenly. Removing the gavel from Carmen Marciano's fist before the sheriff realizes what is happening, Finneran says, still smiling, "You're done now."
"Hasn't Carmen been great, folks?" Finneran doesn't wait for an answer.
At forty-six, Tom Finneran, a Democrat from Mattapan, is the most powerful person in the Massachusetts legislature. If ever there was a man who seems to have the combination of intelligence, charisma, and street fighter's instincts necessary to be a successful Speaker, it is he. On top of it all, he seems to genuinely love his job.
Finneran's upbringing surely has much to do with his comfort as Speaker. He grew up in a close-knit and chaotic family. "You couldn't get a word in edgewise at my supper table," he recalls in an interview in his spacious State House office, his smile belying the solemn glares of the dozens of portraits of his predecessors lining the walls. "I was the middle of seven children. I know it's hard to believe, but I was the quiet one. I remember everyone just talking at the supper table. No one was connecting with anybody else. And nobody was listening. Everyone was just arguing in loud voices. We all had our own ideas on sports, politics, religion. People kid me now and say maybe that's where I learned how to talk so fast. And so much."
The house in which Finneran grew up and where his mother still lives, on Ventura Street in Dorchester, overlooks a ball field and a playground. Across the street, beyond the swaying river grass and mud flats of the Neponset marsh, is the surprisingly pristine Neponset River. Natives call this part of Dorchester "the Grove," or Saint Gregory's Parish. And despite its image as a dangerous place, Dorchester here, near Lower Mills Village and the Milton line, is almost bucolic. Neat houses line leafy streets. Migratory birds sail over the marsh. There are the shrieks of happy children and boats bobbing on the water at the Milton Yacht Club across the river.
Tommy Finneran remembers much of his childhood fondly. While the Grove is pleasant now, it was an even closer-knit community when he was growing up there in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was a white, working-class enclave, clustered around the spires of Saint Gregory's Catholic church and the adjacent parochial school on Dorchester Avenue. There were pubs and the Lower Mills deli, where the local kids hung out, and softball fields where the Finneran boys and their friends spent long afternoons. While many people struggled financially-including the Finnerans, who at one point needed public assistance to get by-there was a strong sense of community among the many large, interlocking Irish families who lived there. Although most of them are gone now, south to the suburbs, many of the Finneran clan remain-including the Speaker.
Everyone in Saint Gregory's Parish knew Tommy Finneran and his brothers and sisters. In winter, the boys would redirect water from the Neponset River onto the frozen marsh to create their own hockey rink. In summer, huge gangs of kids would belly flop off a raft that fathers in the neighborhood, including Bill Finneran, lashed together out of barrels. "On every hot day, all the mothers in the neighborhood would sit on lawn chairs, and we kids would swim and play ball and catch snapping turtles," the Speaker remembers. A favorite hangout was the Dorchester YMCA, near Codman Square. Later, the Y would nurture the alliances that eventually led Finneran to a career in politics.
But his childhood had a dark side, too. Tom Finneran's family was "dysfunctional," he says. His late father was domineering and given to unpredictable rages. William Finneran had moved from New York City, settling in South Boston. He struggled to establish a carpet cleaning business in an unfamiliar city. After World War II, the Finnerans were evicted from their apartment to make way for the landlord's son. The shortage of apartments then made eviction common, particularly for families with children.
A neighbor, state Senate President John Powers, got the Finnerans a place in the Maverick housing project in East Boston. It was an early lesson for Tommy Finneran, perhaps, in the power of political authority. So the future Speaker was born in the Eastie projects. Two years later the family moved to the Old Harbor housing development in South Boston, and then in late fifties his parents bought the triple-decker on Ventura Street in Dorchester.
Although Finneran has been painted by his enemies as a coldhearted conservative railing against welfare entitlements-most notably during his tumultuous battle last spring for the Speakership against his more liberal rival Richard Voke-Finneran said that having survived hard times is something he will never forget.
Finneran's mother, Mary, remembers her middle son as the compassionate peacemaker of the household. When the family moved to Dorchester, seven-year-old Tommy gave her a card wishing her happiness in their new home. "Tom was always exceptional in his ability to see what needed doing and then doing it," she recalls. "Can you imagine the chaos of five boys around here? Tom would talk to me and he'd notice what needed doing while he talked."
Mary Finneran, people say, was the driving force behind her children's academic achievement, especially Tommy's. All of the Finneran children attended the select Boston Latin School, but only Tommy and one sister graduated. Tom was successful, his mother says, because "he always recognized the necessity of homework. He always did what he was supposed to do." Mary Finneran herself was an excellent student, a debate and spelling champion. She earned a degree in physics and chemistry from Emmanuel College in Boston-highly unusual for a girl in those days-and worked in the Signal Corps during the Second World War before retiring to bear and raise children.
Edward O'Neill grew up in the Grove and swam with knots of neighborhood kids in the Neponset River. He remembers Mary Finneran swimming laps in the river-fifty or 100 laps daily. "Of all her kids, Tommy is the one most like her," O'Neill says today. "He was disciplined. Determined. Competitive. A bulldog."
Those qualities were apparent when Finneran played football at Boston Latin. At five feet, seven inches and about 150 pounds, he made an unlikely center, a position usually reserved for Goliaths. "Tommy was always in great shape, but it still was surprising to see him out on the field," says James Byrne, Finneran's law partner today. "I can still remember him standing in front of Latin's quarterback, Vinnie Costello, who was six-five, and people in the stands were amazed."
Finneran's penchant for hard work began early. From a young age, he and his siblings would rise before dawn each day to clean carpets and upholstery for their father. "I could still clean carpets if I had to," the Speaker says. The youthful sleep habits have endured; he sleeps just five and a half hours a night.
When it was time to think about college, Northeastern appealed to Finneran's work ethic. The co-op requirement allowed him to support himself through college (he continued working for the family carpet-cleaning business) and combine academic learning with real-world experience, he says. He remains a strong supporter of the co-op concept today. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and finance in 1973 and proceeded to Boston College's School of Law, one of the traditional proving grounds for future Massachusetts politicians.
When his parents' marriage reached a crisis point, Tom Finneran withdrew briefly from law school to move back home and help stabilize the family. Ever the diplomat and arbitrator, "he was the mainstay," his mother says. After his parents divorced, with his father moving to Cape Cod, Tom was able to complete his legal education and launch his political career.
Finneran entered politics almost by accident. In his last semester at BC Law, he was already married and the father of a baby girl. He says he felt pressure to embark quickly on a career. Several people had urged him to run for the state representative's seat which a friend, Brian Donnelly, was vacating to run for Congress. Among the Finneran backers was his new wife, the former Donna Kelley, whose father had run for state representative in the 1950s. Still, Finneran hesitated until one day in 1978 when, while working out at the Dorchester Y, he ran into Brian Donnelly himself. Donnelly's encouragement induced Finneran to seek election.
Finneran was twenty-eight when he took the oath of office as the Democratic state representative for the twelfth Suffolk County district, which includes sections of Dorchester, Mattapan, Hyde Park, and Milton. The face of Boston has changed radically since 1979, and perhaps nowhere more than in Finneran's district. It is poorer and blacker; minorities now account for sixty percent of the population. But since the first hard-fought race eighteen years ago, Finneran has won reelection eight times, never polling less than seventy-five percent of the vote. At least part of the reason is his responsiveness to constituents. "When we ask, he responds," says Lillie Searcy, a Mattapan community leader who heads the Family Service Center there. "He's come to our center on several occasions. He's invited us to the State House, too."
One place that has not changed much in the last two decades is the State House, with its ambiance of schmoozing, horse trading, competition, alliances, and back-room battles. In fact, it is not unlike Ventura Street when Finneran was growing up there: a somewhat insulated place with its own in-jokes and unique rituals of play and fighting. Massachusetts politics could not have been a more congenial environment for a smart, personable boy from Saint Gregory's Parish.
During his early years in the legislature, Finneran and his family scraped to get by on the $30,000-a-year representative's salary. To make ends meet, the future Speaker moonlighted as a bartender and as a security guard. Later, in the early 1980s, he borrowed money to open Finneran, Byrne, Drechsler & O'Brien, a lucrative law firm in Dorchester in an office building overlooking his beloved Neponset River.
Finneran practiced law full-time throughout most of his legislative career. His firm's clients included companies from regulated industries such as insurance, banks, and liquor. While he served as chairman of the House Committee on Banks and Banking from 1985 through 1990, banks were among his personal legal clients. Before he became Speaker, he brushed off charges from the Boston newspapers of a conflict of interest between his dual careers. Since assuming the Speaker's post, however, Finneran has dropped out of his law partnership, saying that even the perception of a conflict of interest was unacceptable. (He will continue to represent private individuals in lawsuits.)
Despite the change of heart, he credits his law firm with making him a better legislator. "The law practice gave me independence, the freedom to say 'I'm leaving here [the legislature] if I want to,' " he says. "A good part of me doesn't care-I don't care if something is going to cost me politically, because unlike many people up here, I have options. I don't have to compromise my judgment or my ideals because I'm dependent on my State House salary or on being reelected." The curtailment of his legal work means that much of the $100,000-plus he earned annually in legal fees (according to disclosure forms filed with the state) will be reduced, forcing him and his family to rely more heavily on the Speaker's salary of $81,410 a year.
Although Finneran grew up in a working-class neighborhood, where men belonged to unions and virtually everyone voted Democratic, his ideological positions are not always predictable. An admirer of the independent-minded and straight-talking Harry Truman, Finneran likes to think of himself as a leader who tells it like it is and takes unpopular stands if need be. For example, despite his party alignment and the few years he himself spent in public housing, he opposed Massachusetts's welfare system on the grounds that it encouraged the so-called entitlement mentality. He put that belief into practice by coauthoring the state's controversial overhaul of welfare in early 1995. He also opposes abortion and capital punishment, like the leaders of the religion in which he was raised.
As a legislator, though, he is best known for his fiscal conservatism. "I became a saver early on," says the kid from Dorchester, who grew up knowing the value of a buck. He held the powerful position of chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in the late 1980s and early 1990s when, in his words, "the Massachusetts Miracle became the Massachusetts disaster" and the state economy imploded. As liberals and many fellow Democrats howled, Finneran pushed to eliminate formerly sacrosanct entitlement programs and cut local aid by $250 million.
Finneran acknowledges some responsibility for the free-spending Democratic ways that had dominated Beacon Hill for two decades, saying, "I didn't come in as a virgin." But when the money dried up, he was motivated by the challenge of cutting spending accordingly. He considers the hard choices and fiscal surgery during the early nineties among his finest moments on Beacon Hill. Nevertheless, some party members accused him of acting like a bottom linep;obsessed Republican-which may have been one of the reasons that House Republicans voted for Finneran to become Speaker last April.
All thirty-five Republicans crossed the aisle to support him against fellow Democrat Richie Voke, a more traditional liberal from Chelsea whom many observers saw as the shoo-in to succeed Charles Flaherty, who had vacated the Speaker's seat after pleading guilty to federal felony charges. But Finneran executed a preemptive strike over a single weekend, gathering eighty-eight bipartisan votes out of a total of 156.
It was a stunning move; by tradition (but not law), the Democratic caucus nominates the Speaker, and Voke was their choice. "Yet it shouldn't have been a surprise," says one liberal Democratic representative who asked to remain unnamed. Finneran "was very honest and direct and up-front. He said what he was going to do before he did it. People just didn't believe him." Finneran played it just like he played football at Boston Latin: making up with strategy what he lacked in brute force.
But his opponents have not forgotten his disdain for State House tradition. "He can never be the leader of the Democratic party in the House," says the legislator, who supported Voke. "He's a very conservative Democrat." Finneran shrugs off such criticism, saying, "Massachusetts politics is a contact sport." His attitude during the Speakership battle was revealed in a Boston Globe interview, in which he said, "The public expects us to work together in a mature and responsible manner so they can get the government they deserve. I don't think working people care that much about party labels." He called the Voke camp's protestations "temper-tantrum politics."
Besides aggressive politicking, Finneran was aided in his quest for the Speaker's seat by his reputation as a straight-shooter, some observers say. A devoted son, husband, and father who brags about never missing one of his daughters' soccer matches or diving competitions, Finneran was a comforting contrast to the flamboyant Speaker Flaherty, who was portrayed by the media as a party animal cavorting with lobbyists on vacations paid for by someone else. Flaherty's legal and public relations difficulties cast a shadow over the entire House. Finneran's squeaky-clean image was right for the time.
Finneran showed a lack of vindictiveness when he appointed the House leadership team, six weeks after taking over the Speaker's spot. He brought in loyalists but kept on several opponents, too, such as Kevin Honan, who chairs the Ethics Committee. Finneran's friends weren't surprised that he extended the olive branch. "I knew if he was elected, he would keep very talented people on, regardless of how they voted," says former Representative James Brett of Dorchester, who has known Finneran for two decades. And his friends say Voke's portrayal of Finneran as a heartless hatchet man is way off base. "He's a softy," says his law partner, Jimmy Byrne, a former Boston city councillor.
In fact, Finneran's greatest fault is that he's too trusting, according to one of his closest friends. "He might get blindsided being too generous and open, and allowing a courtesy," says Salvatore DiMasi, a Democratic representative from Boston's North End who took office the same day in 1979 as Finneran, and who is now the assistant majority whip. "And I go and I say, 'I told you so.' But that's his nature-trusting. Overly trusting, I'd say."
But no one calls Finneran naive. He has asserted control quickly over the potentially divided House. Liberal elements might be disgruntled with his policies, but observers say no one is likely to challenge him for the Speakership in January 1997. A savvy political pragmatist, Finneran enjoys a warm and mutually respectful relationship with the Republican Governor Weld.
Before heading to work each morning, Tom Finneran meets his brother, Bobby, for a five o'clock run. They jog down Dorchester's Gallivan Boulevard, turn right at McDonald's, and head past Cedar Grove Cemetery, near their old house in Saint Gregory's Parish. They puff up the hills of Milton along Adams Street, the Neponset River far below. They are training for the Boston Marathon, which Tom has run eight times before.
Arriving at the office by 6 a.m., Finneran's first task of every day is writing a letter to his daughter Kelley, a sophomore and champion diver at the College of the Holy Cross. It is a mark of the man that he has become a very successful politician and attorney-accomplishments of which he is proud-yet has remained deeply involved in the daily life of his family.
The swearing-in ceremony for Bob Rufo falls on the eve of Tom and Donna Finneran's twenty-first wedding anniversary. Donna has already headed to their house in Eastham on the Cape-their refuge-and the Speaker plans on ducking out of the State House early to join his wife. The Finnerans have no big bash planned to celebrate, he says, just a quiet weekend together. "We'll just pop open a bottle of wine and toast each other and giggle at all our good fortune. We've had a lot of fun over the years. A lot of fun."
Maria Karagianis, a free-lance writer who has covered the State House for the Boston Globe, wrote about Roxbury's Freedom House in the November 1995 issue.
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