Massachusetts: From Dazzling to Fizzling

In the murk of Massachusetts politics, Democrat Foster Furcolo, Yale-educated (’33) lawyer and sometime playwright, was a dazzler. When he was a Congressman (1949-52), a poll of Washington correspondents rated him one of the ten best on Capitol Hill.

Furcolo handily won the governorship in 1956 and 1958—the first person of Italian extraction to win the job. But Foster fizzled in the statehouse, lost a 1960 primary for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination.

The Payoff. Last week Furcolo, 53, was indicted on charges of misconduct while in office by a 21-member Boston grand jury. In the eight months since it was impaneled at the request of Republican Attorney General Edward Brooke, the grand jury has charged 40 persons with various violations of public trust. It now accused Furcolo of conspiring to arrange a bribe while he was Governor.

The indictment claimed that in 1960 Furcolo wanted to guarantee the re-appointment of his commissioner of public works, Anthony N. DiNatale. Under Massachusetts’ archaic (1780) constitution, final approval for gubernatorial appointments must come from the nine-man Governor’s Council, an elected board that treasures its control over some 1,000 state patronage jobs. The grand jury charged that Furcolo had conspired to pay off four council members so they would vote for DiNatale. In last week’s indictment, the four council members—Democrats all —were charged with asking for and getting a bribe in a conspiracy with Furcolo. DiNatale had been indicted a week earlier on separate allegations of larceny, bribery and conspiracy.

“Obviously Political.” Furcolo denied all, cried that the whole thing was “obviously political,” demanded a trial before Election Day. Instantly, there was speculation about how his indictment might affect contests for state offices. Both gubernatorial candidates —Republican John Volpe and Democrat Francis X. Bellotti—are Italian-Americans, and thereby are presumably equally immune (or susceptible) to any bloc-vote protest. But there is to be a referendum on Nov. 3 on whether to curtail the powers of the Governor’s Council—specifically abolishing its right to approve gubernatorial appointments. Volpe has favored it all along, while Bellotti is on record against curbing the council.

Republican Brooke, the U.S.’s top elected Negro officeholder, is also up for re-election as attorney general.

Would the powerful Italian bloc now rise against him and ruin his chances? Brooke’s campaign managers were unworried, pointed out that he already has an enormous lead and added, almost as an afterthought, that Brooke’s wife is a native of Italy anyway.