On November 4, 1952, John F. Kennedy, a three-term congressman, defeated incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., to become only the third Democrat in history elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. It was a decisive moment. Had Kennedy lost, it is likely that his political career would have ended right there. Lodge, in all likelihood, would have emerged as one of the most powerful political figures in the country, with a good chance of succeeding Ohio's Robert A. Taft as Senate Majority Leader.

But Lodge didn't win in 1952. In fact, he never held elective office again. Instead, he served the remainder of his years in public life in a series of appointive offices, starting with his posting as the US representative to the United Nations in 1953. Although many factors contributed to the Democratic victory, it was Kennedy's blunt, inspired courtship of the relatively new and uncharted women's vote, introduced in 1920, that gained him a Senate seat.

"These tea parties that Kennedy is holding the length and breadth of the state appear to have many women, of all ages, quite excited about the young candidate," reported the Haverhill Gazette, a conservative daily published 30 miles north of Boston, on October 7, 1952. "They ooh and they aah when you mention him, they tell you they think he is wonderful, they give every indication of yearning to run their fingers through his tousled hair. They never mention any qualifications that he may have or may lack for service in the Senate, but this would be too much to expect."

Carefully planned by Pauline "Polly" Fitzgerald, a first cousin of Rose Kennedy, and Helen Keyes, a popular gym teacher from Dorchester, the Kennedy teas were a frank play for the women's vote, which one publication at the time put at more than 52 percent of the electorate in Massachusetts. An estimated 75,000 women from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds went to these affairs. Though most of the teas were concentrated in the Boston metropolitan area--not surprising given the traditionally strong Democratic Party base there--a significant number were staged in populous outlying communities like Lowell, New Bedford, Worcester, and Springfield. Always, their primary function was to attract as many potential female voters as possible.

The procedure used for setting up the tea parties was straightforward: In every city or town where a reception was scheduled, Fitzgerald and Keyes would recruit a locally popular Kennedy supporter, usually a male professional, to help organize the event. "It was very unusual for women to participate in politics at that time," says Fitzgerald. "The man we'd get from each community would form a committee of 50 women who were prominent for one reason or another, and we'd ask each of the 50 women to get in touch with 10 people to see if they would come to the tea and then ask each of those 10 people if they could think of 10 more; in the end, you'd have 5,000 people."

Engraved invitations were mailed. For some recipients, explained Kennedy aide Dave Powers, "the only thing they ever find in the mailbox is a bill, and they find this invitation to go to a reception at a hotel and meet Rose Kennedy and the rest of them--they'd put on their best hat and coat and be there."

Of a reception in Lenox attended by more than 2,000 women, the local Berkshire Eagle noted on September 8, 1952, that, in terms of sheer numbers, the event "was the greatest women's political rally ever staged in the area since women were given the voting franchise more than 30 years ago." In every sense, the paper concluded, the tea party was a success. "The Kennedys, who footed the bill, were satisfied; the women, most of whom were bedecked in Sunday's finest, enjoyed themselves; and several milliners and dress shop operators of the county, who were in attendance, were more than satisfied because [the tea] was responsible for an unusual end-of-the-summer run on hats, frocks, and shoes." In Swampscott, later that month, more than 6,000 women turned out to meet the candidate at a tea in the New Ocean House, a hotel along the rocky coastline of Boston's North Shore.

Most of the teas were held in large rented halls or elegant hotel ballrooms such as the Hotel Sheraton in Worcester and the Hotel Kimball in Springfield. With his charismatic mother and sisters at his side, Kennedy usually began the affairs by thanking everyone in the room for coming, while expressing the hope that they would support his candidacy in November. Following these remarks, the young Democrat and his family would form a reception line and greet every person in attendance. "A few women," a veteran journalist later wrote, "got so carried away with the graciousness of the Kennedy receiving line that they concluded it by bussing the candidate on the cheek."

Afterward, guests would receive in the mail a note from John Kennedy thanking them for their support, along with a reminder that they could render even greater service to the campaign by helping out on a local Kennedy-for-Senator committee.

Though issues such as domestic Communist subversion, Soviet expansionism, and the high cost of living were touched upon, the primary focus of the teas was the candidate himself. As Cabell Phillips of the New York Times observed: "Unmarried, wealthy, Harvardishly casual in his dress, and with a distinguished war record in addition to his other attainments, he just about bracketed the full range of emotional interests of such an all-feminine group--maternal at one end and romantic at the other."

Publicly, Lodge ridiculed the Kennedy teas. "I am told they are quite pleasant little affairs," he informed one audience, "and I'm sure they are nonfattening." Privately, he was less flippant. Fearing the women's vote was slipping away from him, the Republican lawmaker agreed late in the campaign to accompany his publicity-shy wife, Emily Sears, to a series of house parties organized by his supporters across the state.

The Times's Cabell Phillips wrote, "At one I went to the introductions were a trifle stiff. There seemed to be some awe both of the Lodge name and the presence of a United States Senator. But the Senator wandered informally into the kitchen for a brief chat with the husbands gathered around the ice bucket, and then into the living room to meet their wives. In a few minutes, he was seated comfortably on the arm of a chair and talking casually about Korea, the Taft-Hartley Act and the prospect of developing New England water resources." In a further attempt to attract female voters, Lodge prevailed upon his sister-in-law, the glamorous Francesca Braggiotti, to come to Massachusetts to campaign on his behalf. The wife of Connecticut Governor John Davis Lodge, the senator's younger brother, Braggiotti had been born and raised in Italy, where she had achieved a small measure of fame as a dancer and movie actress.

On November 3, 1952, a record 2,422,548 persons went to the Massachusetts polls. Early returns suggested that a Republican sweep was in the making. But at dawn, results broke in the Kennedy camp's favor. The final tally read Kennedy 1,211,984 (51.5 percent), Lodge 1,141,247 (48.5 percent).

Lodge initially blamed his defeat on "those damned tea parties." He may have been on to something. Though official election statistics from 1952 are frustratingly silent on the gender breakdown of voters due to the poor reporting methods of the times, some extrapolations can nevertheless be made.

To begin with, Kennedy's final victory margin of some 70,000 votes closely matched the number of guests, mostly women, who attended his tea receptions statewide during the campaign. Indeed, communities participating in large tea receptions recorded extraordinary increases in the number of voters who went to the polls in comparison to 1946, strongly suggesting that women might have picked up the electoral slack in 1952. "Everywhere," the Boston American reported on election day, "there was evidence that women for the first time were taking complete advantage of their political emancipation. . . . They were turning out en masse, with babes in arms, in many cases."

A record 90.94 percent of all eligible voters cast ballots statewide in 1952, an increase of more than 17 percent over 1946. "[Kennedy's] theme was to hit on the women's vote," remembered Kennedy campaign volunteer Edward C. Berube. "He indicated this to me when I met him. . . that he figured the woman was the one that was going to put him in."

Thomas J. Whalen

Thomas J. Whalen, MA '91, Ph.D. '98, is an assistant professor of social sciences at Boston University. This article is excerpted from his Kennedy versus Lodge: The 1952 Massachusetts Senate Race (Northeastern University Press, 2000).


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