Bob CollinsRichard Donahue has died, and with him goes the last living member of John F. Kennedy’s “Irish mafia.”
Along with Lawrence O’Brien, Kenneth O’Donnell and Ralph Dungan, Donahue played a key role in Kennedy’s Senate and presidential campaigns.
His specialty was working the anti-Catholic states for Kennedy.
“I would get a call, ‘They’re murdering us here with the Catholic stuff.’ And I would say, ‘Hit ’em with the 109.’ West Virginia had the greatest percentage of gold-star mothers, really proud of what their sons had done in the service. That started to help,” he told a Kennedy biographer once.
Donahue also helped engineer JFK’s strategy to defeat Hubert Humphrey in the 1960 primary campaign in which Humphrey couldn’t win the state to the east.
