Tag: Howell Heflin

Unfortunately for Bachrach, Joseph Kennedy II—Robert Kennedy’s son—soon entered the race, as well. Kennedy won endorsements from O’Neill, Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, the Boston Herald, and The Boston Globe, and went on to win. In O’Neill’s famous dictum, all politics really was local. Capuano, Kennedy’s successor, was born in Somerville, in the heart of the Eighth (now the Seventh) District. He garnered the endorsements of Boston’s top Democrats. It didn’t matter that Capuano had the stronger Boston accent and Boston lineage. And in 2018, regional identity matters less than it once did and ideological identity matters more. But overall, as the University of Pennsylvania political scientist Dan Hopkins argues in his book The Increasingly United States: How and Why American Political Behavior Nationalized, “the debates in states and even some localities have taken on a national hue.” Party platforms don’t differ much by region anymore. Which helps explain why Democrats in Texas increasingly resemble Democrats in Massachusetts. Ayanna Pressley may not have as strong a Boston accent as Michael Capuano.