AFTER THE Boston mayoral preliminary election, a runner-up with an Ivy League degree agreed to help the challenger. The also-ran, who later became deputy mayor, was not Sam Yoon of Princeton and the Boston City Council, but John P. McMorrow of Harvard and the Boston School Committee.
It was 1959. Its population dwindling, the city was a stranger to prosperity. Only two high-rise buildings marked the skyline. John B. Hynes, after serving as mayor 10 years, longer than anyone in the city’s history, said he would not run again; the battle to become Boston’s 44th mayor began. It ended in a surprise victory and an administration that gave a new face to the city.
The survivors of the preliminary had been colleagues in the Legislature. State Senate President John E. Powers, 48, of South Boston, finished first with 33 percent, carrying 16 of the city’s 22 wards. Suffolk County Register of Deeds John F. Collins, 40, of Jamaica Plain, was second with 22 percent. Neither candidate was called “Mumbles.’’ Powers deployed a grandiose vocabulary. One of his favorite words was “reciprocity.’’ Collins spoke in plainer language. His most frequent phrase was a mirthlessly effective pun: “Stop power politics.’’
In 1955, polio struck Collins, paralyzing his legs. His rehabilitation efforts reminded voters of his fellow polio victim, President Franklin Roosevelt. Politically, Collins confronted the same odds President Harry Truman faced in 1948. The consensus: no chance.
Powers had the backing of the politicians. Of Boston’s 44 state representatives, 40 backed him. On Nov. 1, two days before the election, a Globe ad said, “I intend to vote for Sen. Pres. John E. Powers for Mayor. He possesses the character, ability and COURAGE to do what is best for Boston.’’ It was signed by Senator John F. Kennedy. The state’s Republican senator, Leverett Saltonstall, also had kind words for Powers, circulated among GOP voters in Back Bay and Beacon Hill.
Collins and Powers wooed the three other preliminary candidates, but neither James Hennigan nor Gabriel Piemonte endorsed. McMorrow, who finished fifth with nine percent, said, “I do not intend to sit this election out.’’ He transferred his popularity in Dorchester to Collins.
Powers declined to debate and little news developed until Oct. 30, when federal agents raided an East Boston bookie joint in a saloon festooned with a “Powers for Mayor’’ sign. The raid suggested that the universality of support for Powers included unsavory elements. But at a “victory reception’’ at Symphony Hall a couple of days later, the state’s attorney general, Edward J. McCormack Jr., a South Boston neighbor of the candidate, told 3,000 supporters that Powers was “a man of good character.’’
The voters went to the polls, and the Globe bannered the result: “COLLINS - BY 24,000. Upset Stuns Politicians.’’
Collins won 114,000 votes and 18 wards. Powers had 90,000 votes, winning only the wards in his Senate district. Another Globe headline said: “Nobody Except the Voters Endorsed Boston’s New Mayor-Elect.’’
Boston University professor Murray B. Levin later wrote a book that blamed the election result on the alienated voter. Alienation was a popular theme in American literature in the 1950s. As the decade aged, quiz show scandals erupted and Ford introduced the Edsel automobile. Still, it was difficult to see the hardworking folk of Allston, Neponset, or Roslindale as so many Holden Caulfields in whimpering search of sincerity.
In Boston as elsewhere, geography is destiny, especially South Boston. Powers won 70 percent in Ward 6 and 64 percent in Ward 7 but was trounced elsewhere. South Boston’s famous loyalty to its own was not an asset in most of the wards. The peninsula’s solidarity did not translate beyond Uphams Corner. Not until 1983, when Ray Flynn defeated Mel King, did a Southie resident become mayor.
More important was voters’ practical skepticism of inevitability. If one guy has so many endorsements, he must owe the endorsers, right? Right. Powers would probably not have hired an outsider, Edward J. Logue, to run the city’s urban renewal programs and set Boston on a new course. When Collins wheeled himself into the “vault’’ room of a downtown bank after his election, he told Boston businessmen, “Gentlemen, you don’t owe me anything and I don’t owe you anything. Let’s talk.’’
A half-century later, Boston is a vastly different, more diverse and prosperous city. When John Winthrop called it “a city on a hill, the eyes of all people upon us’’ in 1630, he expected great things. Among them were elections. Dull or not, a city election every four years has consequences. It did in 1959; it still does today.
Martin F. Nolan is a former Globe reporter and editor. 
