House Speaker Sal DiMasi: 'I've never had a vote like that before'

No matter what we've tagged our heroes over the years - "Person of the Year," its plural, "People of the Year" or more recently, "People Who Made a Difference," only House Speaker Sal DiMasi has the distinction of making our list for two consecutive years.

"Like two Emmys in a row," DiMasi says, breaking into laughter as he readies to have his photo taken in the House chamber during a recent interview. "Right?" he says, eyeballing his spokesman Dave Guarino, who's standing nearby. "Did you like that?"

"Quote him on that," Guarino says with a smirk.

Certainly, DiMasi's earned the right to make corny jokes. Last year, the North End Democrat won accolades for leading the effort to recess the Nov. 9 constitutional convention (ConCon) without a substantive vote on an anti-gay marriage amendment. Legislators, political observers and advocates on either side of the issue thought that was the end of the amendment. The LGBT community celebrated.

Unfortunately, then-Senate President Robert Travaglini had other plans. At the Jan. 2 ConCon Travaglini, who, as the Senate leader presides over the constitutional convention, called for a substantive vote on the matter immediately after the ConCon opened. It passed with 62 votes - 12 more than it needed to advance to another ConCon.

With a second and final vote on the amendment looming over the 2007-2008 legislative session, DiMasi says he wasn't feeling very optimistic that it could be defeated. "I was very anxious and apprehensive about being able to, later on, get the votes that we needed," he says.

Twenty-eight years of Beacon Hill politics had taught him that once a lawmaker's vote is cast, changing it is nearly impossible - which is why he had worked so diligently to kill it procedurally. "In a way I was happy to see that so many people had voted against it," he recalls of the Jan. 2 vote. "But falling short by [those] few votes, I knew what an insurmountable task it may be" to defeat the amendment on its merits. And newly-elected Senate President Therese Murray, despite being a strong backer of marriage equality, promised there would be another substantive vote on the issue.

So DiMasi, now aided now by Murray and newly-elected Gov. Deval Patrick, went back to the work of swinging votes.

"His commitment to us never wavered," said Arline Isaacson, co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, who noted DiMasi's two-plus decades of support for gay rights. "One of his most endearing qualities on this issue was his incredulity about legislators not wanting to support us. ... It speaks volumes about how strongly and how deeply committed he is to our equality that he could no longer understand why legislators weren't agreeing." Isaacson had the opportunity to sit in on some of DiMasi's meetings with legislators. "He didn't threaten them, he didn't say, 'You're going to lose your chairmanship,'" she recalled. "But he'd look them in the eyes and say, 'What's wrong with you? Why don't you get this, why is this a problem?' and the forcefulness of that kind of persuasion made a real difference."

DiMasi wouldn't know just how much of a difference until minutes before he walked onto the House floor on June 14, the day of the final vote. He wanted to be absolutely certain that the votes to defeat the amendment would be there. And the man has a high threshold for certainty. "I know what ... certainty is and what certainty isn't in this business; how people will tell you they'll vote one way and then they don't and they don't have the courage to do it," DiMasi explains. "[Or] they're undecided at the last minute and then you know that they may not vote that way." It wasn't until he received good news in a couple last-minute phone calls to his office that DiMasi achieved an acceptable level of certainty that the amendment would fail. That was two minutes before the start of the ConCon. It was an unprecedented experience for a political power player who used to wrangle votes for his iron-fisted predecessor, Tom Finneran. "I've never had a vote like that before in my whole career here," DiMasi says.

But seeing the actual vote tally, which was 151 to 45, produced a mix of emotions in DiMasi. "I had this great sense of relief, great sense of pride and satisfaction with what I was able to accomplish," he recalls. He felt a great deal of pride in the legislature as an institution and for its members who took a courageous vote. The sense of accomplishment was heightened when he looked at the faces in the cheering crowds. And despite his certainty about the vote, there were surprises in the group of 11 legislators who decided to change their votes, among them Republican Reps. Paul Loscocco and Richard Ross, as well as Democratic Rep. Paul Kujawski.

But DiMasi, as he has so often over the last few years, gives much credit for the victory to the members of the LGBT community, who he believes changed many of his colleagues' minds by sharing their personal stories with them. "Like I said before, congratulations to all of the members of the ... gay and lesbian community for a victory well-deserved," he says. "Hopefully they can go on with their lives in the security of knowing their rights are being preserved here in Massachusetts."

As one of a small group of lawmakers that supported marriage equality from the beginning of the battle, DiMasi, no doubt, has been happy to move on to other business. The question about whether he's glad it's over draws chuckles not just from DiMasi, but also from Guarino.

"Yes," says the speaker. There's no more sleepless nights. He's relieved to be able to set a legislative agenda that's not going to be derailed by a divisive ballot amendment campaign over same-sex marriage. "I think I told my members ... when I tried to convince them that if we vote this down it'll go away and people will not use this and continue to be obsessive about it," says DiMasi. Of course, the end of the marriage battle has its drawbacks: "Little did I know they'd be obsessing about casinos now," he laughs. "Little did I know that. They have to obsess about something."