Local Boy Made Good
The son of two Italian immigrants and the youngest of seven children, Malone was raised in Waltham, Mass., a blue collar suburb of Boston.
After graduating from Waltham High as class president, Malone went on to do a year of post-graduate study at Phillips Andover Academy, At Harvard, Malone's peers--like Michael J. Lynch '76, a sports broadcaster for Boston's Channel 5 News who played football with Malone--say he had a magnetic personality. But to many, Malone's uncanny display of foresight was his most impressive attribute. "He always used to make comments like, 'I ought to be careful with what I do because I might want to run for mayor of Waltham sometime,'" Lynch says. After leaving Harvard, Malone went on to work for a series of Republican politicians including Raymond Shamie, a conservative millionaire from Walpole, Mass. Malone began working for Shamie in 1982 when the millionaire unsuccessfully tried to unseat U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54-'56 (D-Mass.). In 1984, Malone was made campaign manager of Shamie's again unsuccessful campaign against U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). Shamie says that as campaign manager, Malone displayed an exceptional ability to communicate with people. "He's easy to talk to, easy to do business with and he has the knack of putting people at ease," Shamie says. The former chair of the State Republican Committee adds that Malone was not simply a sweet-talking salesperson. "He had very fine selling attributes and it was because he believed in what we were doing," Shamie says. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan asked Shamie to run against Kennedy for a second time, but the aging millionaire had simply had enough. For Malone, it was a perfect opportunity. Although Malone was youthful at age 33, he seized the moment and ran in his first statewide election. As was widely anticipated by local papers who labeled his campaign a "suicide mission," Malone was soundly defeated, pulling in only 34 percent of the vote. Read more in News
