Massachusetts: Eighth District

Rep. Michael Capuano (D)

Michael Capuano (D) Elected 1998, 5th term up
Born:	01-09-1952, Somerville
Home:	Somerville
Education:	Dartmouth Col., B.A. 1973, Boston Col., J.D. 1977
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Barbara)
Elected  Office:	Somerville Alderman Ward 5, 1977-79; Somerville Alderman-At-Large, 1985-89; Somerville Mayor, 1989-98.
Professional Career:	Chief Legal Cnsl., MA Legislature Taxation Cmte., 1978-84; Practicing atty., 1984-90.
DC Office	1530 LHOB, 20515 202-225-5111 Fax: 202-225-9322 Website: www.house.gov/capuano
State Offices	Cambridge:617-621-6208;
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The “Hub of the Solar System” is what the elder Oliver Wendell Holmes called the Massachusetts State House in the 19th century, though over time, his statement has come to be remembered as referring to Boston as the “Hub of the Universe.” Either way, this most political of cities often has been the focal point of essential moments in American history. These streets, originally laid out as 17th century cowpaths, are where Samuel Adams and Paul Revere plotted revolution, where the abolitionist movement helped ignite the Civil War and are the sites of rallies and headquarters of the various Kennedy campaigns. Today’s Boston is a different city from the Boston of John Kennedy’s time. Boston then was a gray city with no new buildings and dust on every windowsill; the sky was dark with pollution and the air was thick with ancient Yankee and Irish animosity. The old office buildings were full of Yankees seeking safe investments for their antique family fortunes; the State House and City Hall were full of Irishmen, scampering after good patronage jobs and regaling each other with political battle stories. Today that Boston is mostly gone. The new skyscrapers are full of well-educated venture capitalists, lawyers and management consultants, many working for high-tech companies radiating from Cambridge out into the countryside. Of the roughly 200 U.S. cities with more than 160,000 people, only four (Boulder, Madison, San Jose and Stamford) have a larger share of residents with college degrees than does Boston. Most of the city’s neighborhoods have changed. Minorities and young singles increasingly populate the central city. The city’s population is down from 801,000 in 1950 to 560,000 in 2005; more than 80% of people in the metropolitan area live in the suburbs.

A long generation ago, students from suburbs across the country who were exploring Boston from their dormitories and campuses felt they were pawing through the living remnants of 1920s America, a quaint place where people called traffic circles “rotaries” and milk shakes “frappes.” Massachusetts has since changed, and nowhere more than in Cambridge. As universities and high tech and biotech have become driving forces of economic growth, Cambridge has gone glitzy, with trendy restaurants and high-priced hotels, boutiques and upscale condominiums; the Central Square retains some of its edginess. Greater Boston may well have the heaviest concentration of graduate students and post-graduate hangers-on of any major city, and this graduate student proletariat’s world is centered on Cambridge, with outposts in lower-income Somerville, Boston’s tonier Back Bay, plus funky Allston and more family-oriented Brighton near Harvard’s Business School.

These communities are part of Massachusetts’s 8th Congressional District, a district rich with historic sites, from the Paul Revere house in the North End to the frigate U.S.S. Constitution in the Charlestown docks. The district, with MIT and the software concentration in Cambridge’s once downscale Lechmere Square, is one of the high-tech capitals of America. The 8th includes all of Cambridge, Somerville and economically revived Chelsea and many Boston neighborhoods—newly upscale East Boston around Logan Airport, Brighton and the Back Bay, Fenway, Mattapan, Mission Hill, the South End. It shares Hyde Park, Roxbury, Dorchester and Jamaica Plain with the neighboring 9th District. For the first time in its history, whites are a minority of Boston’s population. As they replace the many Irish and Italians who left in the 1970s because of court-ordered busing in the schools, Hispanics have caused a population boom in Chelsea and in Dorchester, which annually celebrates one of the nation’s largest Caribbean festivals. This is by far the most Democratic district in Massachusetts.

The congressman from the 8th District is Michael Capuano, the winner of a 10-candidate brawl in the 1998 primary who has been safe since then. It has been said that over the last 60-odd years this district has been represented alternately by townies and Kennedys: James Michael Curley, the scampish five-term mayor of Boston and one-term governor; followed by John F. Kennedy in 1946, then from 1952, Tip O’Neill, the most successful House speaker of this half-century; succeeded on his retirement in 1986 by Joe Kennedy; and now Capuano. He was born and raised in Somerville; his paternal grandfather emigrated from Italy, and his father was the first Italian-American elected official in Somerville; his mother is the granddaughter of Irish immigrants. Capuano graduated from Dartmouth and Boston College Law School. He returned to Somerville to raise his family, practice law and get into politics. By day, he worked for the legislature’s Joint Committee on Taxation and practiced law; in off-hours, he served as alderman in the 5th Ward, like his father before him. He was elected alderman-at-large from 1985–89, then won election five times as the city’s mayor. For decades an Irish and Italian town, Somerville now attracts many grad students and yuppies. Capuano seems to have been the right politician for this mix, with deep Somerville roots and a penchant for innovation and reform. So he had a solid base to run for the 8th District seat when Joe Kennedy announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election. In a 10-candidate field, Capuano led with 23%, with former Boston Mayor (1983–93) Ray Flynn the runner-up at 17%.

In the House, Capuano is well to the left on the national political spectrum, though relatively centrist within the Massachusetts delegation: For same-sex marriage, against the partial-birth abortion ban and opposed to the flag-burning amendment. He sponsored a proposal to expand federal terrorism risk insurance coverage to include group life insurance; the Financial Services Committee, on which he serves, approved a modified version. On the Transportation Committee, he got his share of goodies in the 2005 highway law, including funding for the North Washington Street Bridge near North Station plus several rapid-transit extensions.

Capuano has not been shy about moving beyond local politics. When Catholic bishops across the nation said in 2004 that they would deny communion to John Kerry because of his support for abortion, Capuano replied that all Catholics should vote their conscience. He was a cofounder of the Congressional Caucus on Sudan, and traveled to the region in February 2006 in support of United Nations peacekeeping forces. Even before Democrats won back the House, Nancy Pelosi identified Capuano as somebody who could take an assignment and quietly get the job done without posing a threat to some old-style ways of doing business. She assigned him to lead the effort to rewrite the Caucus rules, including those surrounding gifts and financial disclosure, just after the Boston Globe reported that his December 2005 corporate-sponsored trip to Brazil was one of the most expensive that year. And, following the 2006 election, Pelosi tapped him to take charge of the myriad tasks in the transition to the majority. In many ways, it was a rocky exercise; with Pelosi, he backed John Murtha’s ill-fated challenge to Steny Hoyer for Majority Leader. Some of the rules changes had to be rewritten, and his task to revise ethics enforcement was deferred until months later. "There are no axes out, no blacklist,” he said. “That is not the way we are going to approach things.” He conceded that many tasks were daunting and “disjointed” and that he had a lot to learn, but—in the style of Tip O’Neill—he emphasized inclusion and reform.

Since 1998 Capuano has not faced major-party opposition in either primary or general elections.

Committees

• Financial Services (12th of 37 D)
  Capital Markets, Insurance & Government Sponsored Enterprises; Oversight & Investigations; Housing & Community Opportunity.
• House Administration (3d of 6 D).
  
• Transportation & Infrastructure (17th of 41 D)
  Highways & Transit; Water Resources & Environment; Aviation.

Presidential Vote

District Demographics (More Info)

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: D +33
• Area size: 92 square miles
• Urban Population: 100.0%
• Rural Population: 0.0%
• Population 2000: 634,835
• Population 2005 (est): 603,883
• Median Income: $39,300
• Poverty Status: 19.9%
• Military Veterans: 5.5%
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 48.9% White; 21.9% Black; 8.1% Asian; 0.2% Native Am.; 0.1% Hawaiian; 3.5% Two+ races; 1.5% Other; 15.9% Hispanic Origin;
• Ancestry: 9.9% Irish%; 7.3% Italian%; 5.2% West Indian%;
• Occupation: Blue collar 12.4%; White collar 70.6%; Gray collar 17.0%;