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After Kerry's defeat, he went to law school and got a job with the district attorney's office for Middlesex County, just outside Boston. Although he came to the post with almost no experience, he was quickly promoted. Kerry was a natural in court, according to J. William Codinha, who worked closely with him in the D.A.'s office. Kerry has said he won all 25 to 30 cases he prosecuted. The current D.A.'s office could not confirm this, but Codinha says he does not remember Kerry ever losing. "He's comfortable on his feet. He can make a clear, articulate argument. He understands the mechanics of trying cases," says Codinha, who is now a partner at Nixon Peabody in Boston and remains a friend of Kerry's.
The pinball-machine case was a classic Kerry victory by willpower. In the late 1970s, Kerry called Codinha and said he thought they could prosecute Howie Winter, leader of the Irish mob in Somerville, Mass. Winter had been bullying bars and clubs into replacing their pinball machines with his machines--which were cash cows for Winter. Kerry said he had two club managers who were willing to testify, but Codinha was sure they would change their mind once they learned who Winter was. "I said, 'These guys are going to go south on us. We don't have a witness-protection program. We don't have the money.'" Kerry would not be deterred. "He said, 'If I can get the money, if I can put together a witness-protection program, we can make the case,'" Codinha remembers, laughing. "You'd have to be 25 to believe you could do this."
But Kerry did it. He got the funds, he set up the witness-protection program, and although he and Codinha had to bring back a rattled witness who fled to the Virgin Islands during the trial, they won the case.
Kerry's success as a prosecutor is telling. He liked to probe a problem until he found an opening. When he ran the office, he gave out jobs on the basis of merit, not patronage. He wasn't looking to make friends. All things considered, it's a small miracle Kerry ever got elected in Massachusetts. Says Codinha: "Boston is a parochial town. It's very important for politicians that people know their faces and know their families. And John couldn't care less."
It's possible that Kerry would never have been elected to public office had it not been for Ray Flynn. In fact, one could argue that Kerry would not be running for President had Flynn, mayor of Boston from 1984 to 1993, not supported him when no one else in the Democratic Party apparatus would.
On a Sunday afternoon in July, sitting on the deck of his daughter's house in Quincy, Flynn still looks the quintessential Boston politico. It is his grandson's second birthday, and there's a party going on. A stream of red-haired relatives comes through, each paying respects to Flynn. All the while, he cradles his infant granddaughter in his arm and talks politics like a man who has never left the racetrack.