Letter from Boston: There is no greater political pub in all of Irish America than the Eire, a self-proclaimed "gentleman's prestige bar" in the Dorchester section of Boston.
The last bastion of the old Irish political machine is held outside the Eire the night before primary elections, a rally in which candidates for even the most obscure offices make their pitch. After the speeches, the would-be pols and their supporters put their signs aside and belly up to the bar with the cops, firefighters, teachers, postmen, painters, plumbers and carpenters for whom it is a local.
The Eire has been a strategic beachhead that the Democrats and Republicans have fought over as if it were the political equivalent of Anzio.
Ronald Reagan came to the Eire in 1983, taking a pint of Ballantine Ale from the Roscommon-born head barman Martin Nicholson as he claimed for the Republicans the sort of blue-collar votes that had traditionally gone to Democrats.
Nine years later, Nicholson handed a pint of Guinness to Bill Clinton, who held the glass high above the cheering crowd, declaring that the Democrats had reclaimed the Eire and the votes which its denizens represented. Nicholson also served a pint of Guinness to John Kerry. Unlike Reagan and Clinton, the patrician Kerry didn't impress the Eire regulars, which is as good an explanation as any for why he is not president.
A couple of months ago, Deval Patrick, who was campaigning to become the first African-American governor of Massachusetts and only the second black governor in US history, stepped behind the bar and began pulling pints as a beaming Martin Nicholson looked on. Nicholson said he was impressed not only by Patrick's comfort in a working-class Irish pub, but his insistence on buying a round for the house.
Last week, a group of young Irishmen stood in the Eire, staring at the TV, as news emerged that Deval Patrick had trounced his Republican opponent, Kerry Healey. None of the Irishmen had voted because, like most young Irish in the US, they are living here without legal status. Had they been able to, they said, they would have voted for Patrick instead of Healey, an Irish-American who got her PhD at Trinity College Dublin.
Patrick grew up poor on Chicago's south side, but won scholarships to Milton Academy, a private school near Boston, and then Harvard University and Harvard Law School. He was in charge of civil rights in the Clinton administration.
In this, his first attempt at elective office, he had defied political logic by declaring that if elected he would allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driving licences. Patrick's logic is that the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the US are a fact of life, with an economy dependent on them and them on it. He said there would be no mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and that to pretend otherwise was intellectually dishonest at best and pandering to xenophobia at worst.
Since September 11th, it has been impossible for undocumented immigrants to obtain driving licences legally. This has resulted in fewer young Irish coming over, more going back and a limiting of the types of jobs they can hold.
Like most Republicans, Healey made the demonisation of undocumented immigrants a main part of her campaign. She portrayed them as unsavoury spongers, sometime criminals and potential terrorists, declaring that Patrick wanted to hand out driving licences "to illegal immigrants who could then use them to get on airplanes". And presumably fly them into buildings.
That Healey's ancestors - her maiden name is Murphy - and her husband's came from Ireland, searching for the same opportunities that the post- Celtic Tiger young Irish still seek in the US, had no bearing on her anti-immigrant stand. But her tactic did not resonate with voters.
About a third of Massachusetts residents claim Irish heritage, the biggest percentage of any state, and they vote disproportionately more than other ethnic groups. Some analysts say Irish-Americans formed the biggest ethnic bloc of Patrick's vote.
Patrick's election proved that the idea that the Irish vote as a bloc for their own is a nonsense. In Boston and throughout Massachusetts, the Irish no longer dominate or aspire to political office, primarily because they don't need to. They run the banks, the law firms, the media outlets and other businesses they were effectively barred from controlling for much of the 20th century.
Even as the stereotype of an Irish pol making deals and settling scores in smoky back-rooms fades from the American consciousness, the Irish influence on politics in this most Irish slice of America persists and is deeply rooted.
Eight of Boston's 13 city councillors are Irish-American, but it goes beyond numbers.
Twenty years ago, not long after Bruce Bolling became the first African-American president of Boston city council, he used his new power to punish a political rival, maintaining a tradition that stretched back a century, when Irish ward bosses used their clout to reward friends and punish anyone who challenged the machine. When I half jokingly chided him about it, saying he had acted like an Irish pol, Bolling smiled. "In this town," he said, "we're all Irish by osmosis."
Last week, in the most Irish corner of the US, the Irish voted for the black guy, not one of their own. To paraphrase Bruce Bolling, and with a nod to Jimmy Rabbitte from The Commitments, we're all black by osmosis.
Kevin Cullen is a reporter for the Boston Globe