Hot Blueblood

Few Republican politicians in Massachusetts ever defy the cozy "escalator" system on which ambitious vote getters rise to the upper levels just by staying in line. But last week a young Harvard blueblood skipped the first steps, stormed the heights, carried if off with startling success, and thereby became the hottest Bay State political prospect in years.

He is six-foot, sandy-haired Robert Fiske Bradford, 41, ninth direct descendant of old Governor William Bradford, the Mayflower Pilgrim who governed Massachusetts for 30 one-year terms with a blunderbuss in one hand and a prayerbook in the other. Young Bradford is the kind of Harvard graduate who still sculls on the Charles twice a week, and repairs to a Maine cottage every summer with his blueblood wife and four children. But he also knows when to call a tomahto a tomayto, and he speaks with some of the oratorical grandeur of John L. Lewis; with the same effective trick of ranging from a whisper to a sudden roar. In a swift series of 500 campaign speeches, young Bob Bradford last week finished strong even in some stout Irish precincts, where to be a Yankee and a Harvard man is to be twice-damned.

Blueblood Bradford won his reputation in two terms as District Attorney of Middlesex County, which surrounds Boston on the north with slums, farms and villages. In this time he sent the mayors of Cambridge and Lowell, and the State Commissioner of Public Works, to jail. (The mayor of Marlboro, another Bradford target, killed himself.) Bradford was re-elected with the biggest majority in Middlesex history (he had twice the lead of his fellow blueblood, Governor Leverett Saltonstall, who headed the ticket).

Four months ago, Bradford began campaigning for Lieutenant Governor, a spot traditionally reserved for men who have served first in the State Legislature, and then worked up either as Speaker of the House or President of the Senate. Outraged by this audacity, both the Speaker and the Senate President ran against him. Result: last week Bradford got more votes than both the escalator candidates and two other opponents combined.

But Bob Bradford now had to take his place on the escalator again; the Lieutenant-Governorship is the next-to-last step. If he wins in the November finals (as seems likely), Massachusetts may some day have its second Governor Bradford in 300 years.

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