THE NEW YORK TIMES – George Cabot Lodge, who unlike four of his ancestors lost in his attempt to gain a Massachusetts seat in the U.S. Senate, enabling a member of a rival dynasty, Edward M. Kennedy, to begin a five-decade congressional career, died on Jan. 4. He was 98.
His death was announced by Campbell Funeral Home, which is, appropriately enough, on Cabot Street in Beverly, Mass., where Mr. Lodge lived and which has been home to his family for generations. The announcement did not say where he died.
Mr. Lodge later found a professional home at another institution shared by both his family and the Kennedys, Harvard University, where he was a surprisingly anticapitalist business professor for many years. But he long remained associated with his 1962 Senate race against Ted Kennedy.
That contest made Mr. Kennedy a senator just months after turning 30, the minimum age required by the Constitution. He stayed in the job until his death 47 years later, amassing one of the longest careers in the Senate’s history.
The ’62 race also represented the fourth time since 1916 that a member of the Cabot Lodge family, an old and distinguished clan of Boston Protestant Republicans, ran for office against the Kennedy-Fitzgeralds, two rising, conjoined families of Boston Catholic Democrats.
The first race — a Senate election in which Henry Cabot Lodge Sr., the incumbent, faced John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, Boston’s former mayor and the maternal grandfather of John F. Kennedy — was a dominant Cabot Lodge victory.
The next two races pitted Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., George’s father, against John F. Kennedy. In 1952, Mr. Lodge Jr. lost his Senate seat to Mr. Kennedy, and in 1960, Mr. Lodge lost to Mr. Kennedy again, as Richard Nixon’s running mate on the Republican presidential ticket.
Round Four, in 1962, signified the end of not only the families’ rivalry but also, it seemed, the Cabot Lodge political dynasty itself and, with it, their style of liberal Republicanism …
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“Here’s to dear old Boston,
Home of the bean and the Cod,
Where the Lowells speak only to Cabots,
And the Cabots speak only to God.”
– Noted Massachusetts political rhyme
Boston native Mark E. Johnson writes about politics, health, and current events for major national news outlets.
