Southie Sean
| 👷 | |
| Era | The Seventies |
|---|---|
| Age | 24-29 |
| Home | South Boston, MA |
| Demographic | urban, Irish Catholic, working-class |
| Lean | Lean Republican |
| Race | white |
Sean is an ironworker in South Boston who returned from Vietnam and still holds the Democratic Party registration he inherited from his father. He is the cast's young hard-hat Catholic of the Northern cities, leaving his family's party over Vietnam, crime, and the busing order.
Who they stand for
The Hard Hat Riot of May 1970, in which New York construction workers attacked anti-war marchers, announced the bloc that Sean belongs to. It is made up of young white ethnic tradesmen and Vietnam veterans whose fathers were New Deal Democrats, and its members now vote on the flag, the police, and the neighbourhood school. Nixon called this group the 'silent majority' in a speech in November 1969, and in 1972 he won a majority of the Catholic vote, a first for a Republican candidate. In Boston the break with the Democratic Party comes over school busing. Judge Garrity's 1974 order paired South Boston High School with a school in Roxbury to desegregate the schools. Louise Day Hicks's organisation ROAR organised resistance to the order. Ted Kennedy was shouted down at City Hall Plaza for supporting the order. The Philadelphia Plan of 1969, which forced building trade unions to accept Black apprentices, put the federal government on the opposite side of Sean's union card. Hamtramck Stan's loyalty to his union survives the culture war, but Sean's union grievance and his political anger point in the same direction, and both are pulling him out of the Democratic Party.
Playing to them
Sean responds to a president who honours veterans, backs the police, treats campus protest as a public order problem rather than legitimate political dissent, and stands against court-ordered busing. Law and order issues win his support. The war does not work the same way, because he is torn on it, so a president can end the war without losing his support as long as the withdrawal is not presented as a defeat. He will not forgive an amnesty for men who evaded the draft, a president seen associating with the campus left, or a federal judge ordering changes in his own neighbourhood. His local branch of the Ironworkers union is the one place where he is still a Democrat, so a president who attacks labour unions loses the part of Sean's loyalty that he shares with Hamtramck Stan. Winning Sean's support is the Southern strategy applied to Boston, and it carries the same cost. Motor City Moses, Birmingham Bernice and Upper West Side Ruth recognise busing resistance for what it is. Berkeley Bruce and Japantown June are the people Sean wants to see punished. Main Line Margaret regards the whole appeal as vulgar.
Where they live
The five states where Southie Sean makes up the largest share of the electorate in the seventies:
- Massachusetts
- New Hampshire
- Maine
- Rhode Island
- Connecticut