John M. Bailey

Born: Hartford; November 23, 1904
Died: Hartford; April 10, 1975

Entry by Herbert F. Janick

Joseph Lieberman, himself an accomplished Connecticut politician, aptly entitled his biography of John M. Bailey, The Power Broker. For it was the role of the behind-the-scenes strategist—who picked candidates, distributed patronage, selected issues, and enforced party discipline—that defined Bailey's life. As Connecticut Democratic party chairman for almost thirty years, from 1946 until his death in 1975, and as national Democratic party chairman from 1961 to 1968, Bailey acted as the complete political boss.

Bailey looked and often acted like the traditional ward politician. Tall and rumpled with an ever-present cigar in his mouth, his glasses pushed up on his forehead and speaking in a hoarse confidential tone, he was at home in the smoke-filled rooms of convention hotels. He was an artist at balancing a ticket to conform to Connecticut's ethnic composition. He worked hard at disguising the facts that he was the son of a well-to-do-physician, had been educated at Catholic University and Harvard Law School, and maintained a lucrative Hartford law practice. Yet in reality he was a new-style boss who combined mastery of parochial political detail with astute knowledge of the legislative process and enough national vision to become one of the members of President Kennedy's inner circle of advisors.

Winning elections was the ultimate testimony to his skill. Beginning with the 1948 upset victory of Chester Bowles' campaign for the governorship, a candidate most experts considered too liberal for Connecticut, Bailey maneuvered the election of a number of long shots. His most successful effort was in propelling an unknown Hartford lawyer, Abraham Ribicoff, to become the first Jewish Governor of the state in 1954. This was the start of a twenty-year career by Ribicoff as governor, United States senator, and Cabinet officer. The election of Ella Grasso in 1974 as the first woman in the United States elected governor in her own right was his last hurrah. Most of Bailey’s protégés shared his moderate, centrist, pragmatic approach to politics.

Bailey's skill at harmonizing, so evident in Connecticut, was also effective on the national level. In 1956 he led the Convention drive that failed by only twenty votes to nominate fellow New Englander John F. Kennedy as vice president. He was the leader of the Kennedy forces at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in 1960 and was rewarded by being named chairman of the Democratic National Committee, serving Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

For Further Reading

Joseph I. Lieberman, The Power Broker (Boston, 1966) deals almost exclusively with Bailey's activities in Connecticut. Theodore White, The Making of the President, 1960 (New York, 1967), describes Bailey's activities in politics on the national scene.

* Entry under revision.