[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 72 (Thursday, June 8, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5656-S5657]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          HONORING RAY DOOLEY

 Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, earlier this year Boston lost a 
legendary political organizer, Mr. Ray Dooley, whose passion and 
intelligence lifted Massachusetts and everyone who worked with him. I 
ask unanimous consent that the remarks I delivered at his memorial 
service be printed in the Record:
  The information follows.
  Anne, Catroina, Conor, and Brian, in the time since your husband and 
father was taken from all of us, but especially was taken too soon from 
you who loved him best and needed him most, people across Massachusetts 
and Ireland have rightfully remembered Ray's social conscience, his 
decency, his strength, his wisdom, and his judgment.
  Each of these qualities of character ought to be especially 
celebrated because they are as suddenly rare in public life as they 
were abundant in Ray Dooley.
  But they don't tell us the something about Ray which brought so many 
of us in this room together time and again, from movements to end an 
unjust war, to the march for civil rights, to Ray Flynn and City Hall, 
to hard fought, bare knuckled Senate races in 1984 and 1996 in which 
Ray took center stage. I know better than anyone that they wouldn't 
have ended in victory without him.
  Ray lived out what Winston Churchill's political right hand R.A. 
Butler knew: ``Politics is largely a matter of heart.''
  But more than that even, Ray Dooley taught a generation of 
politicians and political organizers that idealists could be tough as 
nails--and that there was nobility in fighting your heart out on the 
political field. He shattered anyone's illusion that liberals were 
fuzzy headed bleeding hearts out of the Ivy Tower who floated above the 
fray. Ray was never defensive about being `in politics'--he was proud 
of it, he wore his passion for the game on his sleeve. He was gutsy, 
determined, and in the finest sense of the phrase, a true believer. Ray 
showed us all how to win a campaign and keep your conscience.
  Harry Truman, who rose through the ranks came of age of Kansas City's

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Pendergast machine, was once asked if he minded being referred to all 
his life as a `politician' while others were called `statesman.' Truman 
laughed and said `they only call you a statesman when you're gone.'
  I have no doubt Ray would prefer to be remembered as a political 
organizer--for he was one of the best and he gave his talent not only 
for his candidates--and what a difference he made for us--but for the 
common good. And what a difference that made for our city, our state, 
and our country.
  Ray had steadiness, toughness, and a willingness to ruffle feathers--
along with the force of character to tell candidates when they're 
wrong. More than once he said to me: ``John, cut the b.s.'' Ray, I hope 
I've finally learned.
  He knew that in politics you can't make everyone happy and he saw 
those on the other side as opponents, but never enemies. He fiercely 
wanted to defeat them, but never to destroy them.
  He also had grit, and an instinct for when to tell a loud mouth to 
pipe down, finally giving a reluctant activist at the end of the table 
the confidence to speak up--and speak out. It was leadership, the art 
of politics at its best; he was a man who lived for others.
  No, Ray was never afraid to be `in politics' because he knew it was 
politics that got things done for the people whose cares were his 
cause--for the poor who lacked decent housing, for a city divided over 
race, for women and gays and lesbians who only ask for the freedom to 
be who they are, for workers who deserve decent wages, and, in Ireland, 
for children whose rights and dignity had to be respected.
  It wasn't cheering things on as they were that made the progress Ray 
demanded, it wasn't high fallutin words that got these things done, it 
was politics--it was deal-making--it was Ray Dooley and the language 
was Dooley-speak.
  Ray was a kind of quiet Pied Piper not unlike our old friend Michael 
Ventresca. He loved underdogs. Tom Gallagher wasn't supposed to win, 
but Ray proved the wise-guys wrong. Ray Flynn wasn't supposed to win, 
but Dooley proved them wrong again. And I wasn't supposed to win--but 
Ray believed, and I'm glad that together we proved him right. And in 
all these underdog fights, he loved being an odd couple political 
matchmaker. It was Dooley and the best kind of politics in 1983 and 
1984 that surprised many and puzzled some when he helped to bring Ray 
Flynn and me together. It was Dooley who made it possible for Susan 
Tracy to stand at the Jackson Mann School on primary day 1984 when 
Ray's first victorious candidate Tom Gallagher came to my aid. It was 
Ray who knew what it would mean to have a red ink stamp on all the 
Kerry lit that read ``endorsed by Rep. Tom Gallagher.'' That was Ray 
Dooley. It was the same Dooley style politics that showed up in Iowa in 
2004--when suddenly local reporters starting hearing about nuns 
phonebanking voters in Dubuque as part of Catholics for Kerry. I don't 
envy the Bush supporter on the receiving end of that phone call!
  That's how Ray Dooley won grassroots races: one house, one block, and 
one precinct at a time. In an era when the art of politics is abused by 
some in the profession and cynically dismissed by some in the press, 
it's important to remember--Ray showed how to do it right and for the 
right reasons.
  Ray lived up to the words of John Kennedy--that politics is an 
``honorable profession.'' To Ray it was the worthiest of endeavors, a 
joyful profession. And through all the turbulence and temptations, he 
was always above all something he prized in others--a man of honor.
  But Ray wasn't just an individual force; he leaves behind an army he 
enlisted to carry on his mission. He built a farm team of political 
professionals who have become All Stars while staying true to 
progressive causes. They carry a whole lot of Ray with them in the 
hopes and energy that fuels the work of Mary Beth Cahill, Patty Foley, 
Michael Whouley, Joe Newman, Kevin Honan, Susan Tracy, Marie Turley, 
Howard Leibovitz, and John Giesser. Anne, Catroina, Conor, and Brian 
miss Ray in a way beyond measure; but his political family here in 
America also misses a friend, a mentor, a surrogate father and adopted 
brother.
  With his humor, his doggedness, and his rare qualities of insight, 
Ray fought and won great political battles. Campaign manager, chief 
strategist, conscience--he was all this and more in politics. And he 
was every bit as talented, committed, and resourceful in searching out 
treatments for his illness while always thinking about how medical 
science could help improve treatment for future cancer patients. He 
saved his hardest fight for the race in which he was the ultimate 
underdog. With humor, he laughed at his own mortality, sustaining those 
around him. Others might have reasonably given up, but not Ray. Why 
give in to the long odds of beating a tough cancer when long odds had 
never stopped him before? Knocked on his ass, Ray Dooley dusted himself 
off and kept punching. And each of us could learn a lot from that too.
  So: our friend Ray was many things: an activist, a shameless 
idealist, an unapologetic progressive, a self-proclaimed liberal, a 
humanitarian, and a globalist in the best sense of the word. But it 
would be a mistake if his passing from man to unforgettable memory made 
any of us forget that Anne's husband, the father of Catroina, Conor, 
and Brian, was also the tough, go-to, level-headed, street-smart 
strategic leader who lived and breathed politics in this proudly 
political city--and in Dooley-speak, he was damned good at it.
  Ray, we gather here now one last time as your legion of lifelong 
friends. Tomorrow and tomorrow, we will miss--you and so will the 
world, for the injustices you would've righted, the hurts you would 
have healed, and the great clashes that would've summoned you to arms. 
Your legacy is a generation that loves politics as much as you did and 
fights with the same heart, conviction, and passion that are your 
undying gift to us, your political family. You are buried in your 
beloved Ireland, but for years to come your soul will be with us here 
in that other Irish place you loved, the city of Boston.

                          ____________________