Planning a Faneuil Hall memorial service for a major political figure like Rep. Barney Frank, who died on May 19, is no small task. Would Speaker Nancy Pelosi like to attend? Former Senator Chris Dodd? Who should speak? How do you capture a 50-year political career and a man of ground-breaking legislation, legendary impatience, sniper-quality humor, unembarrassed personal honesty and endless integrity?
Needham’s Jim Segel has that honor and challenge for the June 8 event. As Frank’s lifetime friend, one-time campaign manager and counsel to the committee that wrote the Dodd-Frank banking reform legislation after the 2008 financial crisis, he’s happy to serve. Frank was a brilliant, talented politician, Segel said. Once, a political journal “asked all the Republicans and all the Democrats who they thought the five most partisan members were. And Barney was chosen as one of the five most partisan Democrats. Then they asked who was the most bipartisan. Barney was chosen in that five. Well, that’s pretty extraordinary. That’s telling. So that he was a very strong partisan for Democratic values. But he also, when he wanted, could get things done and work with the other side.”
Segel’s relationship with Frank goes way back — and then some.
“I met him in September of 1964. I was an undergraduate at Harvard,” Segel said, “and he was what they called an assistant senior tutor, sort of like a teaching assistant who lived in the residence. He had just come back from Mississippi Summer, and I had enormous respect for anyone who would risk his life [for civil rights]. Three men were murdered, two with similar backgrounds to Barney.”
“Barney just loved being in the dining room, smoking a cigar and talking politics. It was really the best academic experience that those of us who were interested in government had.” Later, Frank told Segel those conversations persuaded him to become a politician instead of an academic.
“He enjoyed the interaction with people, the arguments and the persuasion and so forth, much more than writing a thesis — which he never did.”
Segel also became a politician, at least for a while. He and Frank were both elected to the Massachusetts House in 1972. Segel was 27; Frank was 32. It was quite a class of new faces in the State House, including Mel King, Ed Markey (whom Segel calls “Eddie”), Brian Donnelly, and many others who went on to prominence in state and national politics.
After three terms, Segel said he decided continuing in state politics was not going to be financially viable as he started a family. He entered the world of municipal finance, but with a flourish: he served as the campaign manager for Frank’s first congressional run in 1980. The sitting representative, the Rev. Robert Drinan, was a Catholic priest, and church leaders decided priests should not be elected politicians, so the fourth congressional district seat opened up.
“It was a very conservative year,” Segel said. “Ronald Reagan won Massachusetts and Prop. 2½ passed. We [Democrats] lost six Senate seats in the West. Our opponent was Richard Jones from Fort Devens. No one knew anything about him. It was purely a litmus test on Barney.”
They won that 1980 campaign, and Frank went on to serve 16 terms, including surviving a major redistricting in 1982 that divided Frank’s Brookline-Newton base and required that he learn the fishing industry as he began representing New Bedford.
“He was comfortable in Brookline because of the issues and the intellectual challenges,” Segel said. “But he loved New Bedford. He was born in Bayonne (a New Jersey port city) and I think he identified more with New Bedford people. He became an expert on fishing. And so people in Congress would turn to him for fishing knowledge, and he would testify in different places. His mind was extraordinary.”
As effective as Frank was, Segel admits his prickly personality could get in the way. For example, Frank did not want to be lobbied by people whose causes he already supported. Don’t waste my time, he would tell them. “Sometimes because of other experiences (with Frank),” Segel said, “people would rather talk with me.”
But that was not universally true. Segel’s wife Mimi remembers when one of their daughters sold Frank Girl Scout cookies. She had left a message and Frank called back and asked for her. Segel remembers half cringing in the background while their daughter recited all of the kinds of cookies and what made each one special — “this one is shortbread with chocolate representing an endangered species” — but the famously impatient representative listened to the entire pitch before placing his order.
Frank’s sexuality was also a factor, both in his successes and in his political challenges. He had told Segel he was gay in 1978, before he ran for statewide office but long after he had introduced 1973 state legislation supporting gay rights. He famously came out to the country in 1987, the first gay representative to voluntarily discuss his sexuality, and never shied away from defending people’s right to their own sexuality. But he didn’t really have a life partner until relatively late in life, when he met and eventually married Jim Ready in 2012. Segel said the marriage made it much easier for Frank to eventually retire, and, of course, helped as he began to fail. There were parts of life he had ignored as he put politics first.
Segel was central to the legislation Frank is probably best remembered for: The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which placed new oversight and regulation on the banking industry in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Segel moved to Washington, D.C. to serve as counsel to the committee that was drafting the 2,300-page bill that limited ways in which banks could take on risk, treat customers, create mortgages, and generally required they act in a more above-board and trustworthy manner.
Frank had called Segel when he became chairman of the House Financial Services Committee in 2006. It had been more than 45 years since Segel had served as Frank’s campaign manager.
“I was special counsel,” Segel said. “I was never chief of staff, so I did not have line responsibility. I could do whatever I wanted with no supervision, which was great and was good for him because people could talk to me and know they were talking to him. He had an extraordinary staff, which I really appreciated. But I reported to him and I had an open portfolio. I was a liaison in Congress to the members and sometimes to the agencies.”
Shortly after the bill passed, Frank began contemplating retirement. The state was going through another redistricting which would change his constituency and perhaps put a winning election in doubt. Segel said he understood the decision — and that part of it was that Frank’s non-political life was finally happy.
When Frank went into hospice, Segel began calling weekly. He said that, while Frank believed that principles matter, he insisted that voters should not use positions on controversial issues as a litmus test for politicians. To the end, Frank was hoping to influence voters.
And now a memorial service to plan. “It’s pretty extraordinary to me that a man who’s been out of office for 14 years is getting so much attention. And national attention — The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, it’s NBC, CBS, NPR.
“Dodd-Frank. The first openly gay member. He made a mark.”
So did Jim Segel.
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