Entry Into Politics
O'Neill first became active in politics at 15, campaigning for Al Smith in his 1928 presidential campaign. Four years later, he helped campaign for Franklin D. Roosevelt. As a senior at Boston College, O'Neill ran for a seat on the Cambridge City Council, but lost; his first race and only electoral defeat. The campaign taught him the lesson that became his best known quote: "All politics is local".
After graduating in 1936, O'Neill was elected at the age of 24 to the Massachusetts House of Representatives; aided by tough economic times among his constituents; an experience that made him a strong advocate of the New Deal policies of Roosevelt, which were just then coming to an end. His biographer John Aloysius Farrell said his background in Depression-era working class Boston, and his interpretation of his Catholic faith led O'Neill to view the role of government as intervening to cure social ailments. O'Neill was "an absolute, unrepentant, unreconstructed New Deal Democrat," Farrell wrote.
In 1949, he became the first Democratic Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in its history. He remained in that post until 1952, when he ran for the United States House of Representatives from his home district.
Read more about this topic: Tip O'Neill
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