“Robert Frost said to John F. Kennedy: ‘be more Irish than Harvard,’” former Boston City Councillor Lawrence S. DiCara ’71 said. “Maybe she should be more grandmother than professor.”
Warren has emphasized that she is the daughter of a maintenance worker and that she grew up “on the ragged edge of the middle class,” a reference to her hardscrabble Oklahoma upbringing.
“On the one hand she’s a Harvard professor and clearly an advocate of government regulation, but on the other hand she does come from a working class background and claims that the regulations were for the middle class,” said David Luberoff, the executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard Kennedy School. “She has a potentially populist message that could conceptually resonate with the residents of a place like South Boston.”
Like most other Americans, the neighborhood’s residents said that the state of the economy and job-creation are at the top of their list of concerns going into the election, which Warren has worked hard to capitalize upon.
Bernie Ordway works at a barber shop and said that he has witnessed small businesses struggle in the difficult financial climate. In particular, insurance rates have become very costly, he said.
Kathleen, who works as a waitress and declined to give her last name, said that she has noticed a decrease in customers recently, and that her boyfriend, an iron worker, has struggled to find work.
Fears like these—and an ineffectual campaign by Coakley—allowed Brown to win what has long been a Democratic seat. According to Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling firm, Warren currently leads Brown by two percentage points state-wide, leading 46 percent to Brown’s still strong 44 percent.
“I think [the people of South Boston] are enamored by that other clown in his barn coat and pick up truck,” South Boston resident Sean Connelly said, referring to Brown. “He buffaloed Southie in the last election.”
DiCara said that Brown has done an admirable job of making himself known in Boston neighborhoods, which will make him a tough candidate to defeat.
“That’s the sort of thing Ted Kennedy did. People felt they knew him really well even if they didn’t, and they get that feeling from Scott Brown,” DiCara said. “Scott Brown has extraordinary appeal to the common man.”
“If she really wants [to win], she’s got to get out on the streets and talk to people,” life-long South Boston resident Steve O’Brien said.
—Staff writer Tara W. Merrigan can be reached at tmerrigan@college.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Zoe A. Y. Weinberg can be reached zoe.weinberg@college.harvard.edu.