A Ray of Hope

Ray Shamie is maddening. The 62-year-old Massachusetts entrepreneur, the hero of an archetypally rags-to-riches success story, doesn’t know his place.

In 1982 he failed to act the part of a Republican sacrificial lamb losing gracefully to Senator Edward Kennedy; he lost all right, but he wasn’t trounced, and in consolidating conservative support from disaffected Democrats and independents he laid the groundwork for a revitalized GOP of a mildly rightward stripe. This year, alone among Republicans, he challenged Senator Paul Tsongas before Tsongas retired from the race owing to lymphatic cancer. Then, when former Massachusetts Attorney General and federal Secretary of Everything Elliot Richardson suddenly remembered where Massachusetts was and returned to the Bay State to challenge Shamie for the Republican nomination, Shamie refused to roll over and play dead.

DB

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David Brudnoy

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Ray Shamie is maddening. The 62-year-old Massachusetts entrepreneur, the hero of an archetypally rags-to-riches success story, doesn’t know his place.

In 1982 he failed to act the part of a Republican sacrificial lamb losing gracefully to Senator Edward Kennedy; he lost all right, but he wasn’t trounced, and in consolidating conservative support from disaffected Democrats and independents he laid the groundwork for a revitalized GOP of a mildly rightward stripe. This year, alone among Republicans, he challenged Senator Paul Tsongas before Tsongas retired from the race owing to lymphatic cancer. Then, when former Massachusetts Attorney General and federal Secretary of Everything Elliot Richardson suddenly remembered where Massachusetts was and returned to the Bay State to challenge Shamie for the Republican nomination, Shamie refused to roll over and play dead.