Dorchester bar’s regulars bellwether for electorate
The first time John Forbes Kerry walked into the Eire Pub in Dorchester, some 20 years ago, Martin Nicholson, the great barman, regarded him much as William Butler Yeats regarded life and death.
Horseman, pass by.
Kerry, who was running for the US Senate for the first time, pointed to a plaque on the wall, which commemorates President Reagan's 1983 visit to the pub.
"How do I get one of those?" Kerry asked.
Nicholson, an affable native of County Roscommon, Ireland, did not even look up from the pint he was pouring.
"Get elected president," he told the patrician pol.
On Thursday night, Nicholson looked up at one of the myriad televisions that fill the Adams Village pub, as Kerry finished his speech at the Democratic National Convention at the FleetCenter, and nodded in approval.
"I think he could do it," Nicholson said.
Kerry's speech, accepting his party's nomination for president, was probably the most important one he has made. The way it went down in the Eire Pub was instructive, if only because this is a strategic, working-class beachhead the Democrats and Republicans have fought over as if it were the political equivalent of Anzio or Salerno.
When Reagan came to the Eire in 1983, with the express purpose of declaring that Republicans could win the sort of blue-collar, lunch-pail votes that had for generations gone unquestioningly to the Democrats, Nicholson handed him a pint of Ballantine Ale. Reagan took a couple of sips, then put the glass on the bar. The regulars at the Eire fondly recall that the glass was promptly appropriated by Margaret Heckler, the former Massachusetts congresswoman Reagan later appointed as ambassador to Ireland.
In 1992, then-Mayor Raymond L. Flynn, who had brought Kerry to the pub in 1984 with the express purpose of shaking the latter's image as a blue blood, steered presidential candidate Bill Clinton into the Eire, and the two of them -- a poor child from Southie and a poor child from Little Rock -- declared that the Democrats had reclaimed the Eire, and the votes that such a claim entailed. Clinton used a pint of Guinness for a photo prop, but he did not drink it, something that rankles some regulars, even to this day.
"What a phony," Phil Martin sniffed, years after Clinton's visit. "He didn't inhale, either."
Last week, Reagan's namesake walked through the door at the Eire and shook hands with Nicholson. Ballantine is no longer on tap. No bother. Ron Reagan asked for a Smithwick's, a relatively recent Irish import. And he drained it.
A couple of nights after he visited the pub his father made nationally known, Reagan told Democrats at the FleetCenter that the current administration is beholden to Bible-thumping extremists who would prohibit the kind of research that is crucial to curing debilitating diseases, including the Alzheimer's that robbed his father of a rich memory. Things change.
The people who drink at the Eire are police and firefighters, postal workers and teachers. There are many union members who have traditionally voted Democrat, but many of them have a conservative bent, so everything is up for grabs.
When he went after Bush, Kerry did score some points with some of the regulars. His observation that "You don't value families by kicking kids out of after-school programs and taking cops off our streets, so that
If Kerry is elected president, and he returns to the Eire, they will have to put a plaque on the wall opposite Reagan's. That means Reagan will be on the left, and Kerry will be on the right.
Nicholson chuckled at the thought, and the irony.
Kevin Cullen can be reached at cullen@globe.com.
