Larry O'Brien

O'Brien was born on July 7, 1917, in Springfield, Massachusetts. He learned about politics at a young age. His father, a local leader of the Democratic Party, recruited him at 11 years old to serve locally as a volunteer in the 1928 presidential campaign of Al Smith. O'Brien became a passionate Democrat. He earned a bachelor's degree in law in 1942 at the Northeastern University – Springfield Division, now known as the Western New England University School of Law. O'Brien was married to the former Elva Brassard in 1945. They had one son, Lawrence F. O'Brien III, who became a lobbyist.

He was appointed in 1946, 1948, and 1950 by his friend Foster Furcolo to serve locally as the director of the U.S. House of Representatives election campaigns. O'Brien was appointed in 1952 by John F. Kennedy to serve in Massachusetts as the director of his successful U.S. Senate election campaign and, in 1958, to serve in Massachusetts as the director of his successful reelection campaign. Kennedy's elections were largely attributed to O'Brien's recruitment, his use of volunteers, and his development of a statewide election campaign.

In 1959, he built the foundation for Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign by touring the United States. O'Brien was appointed in 1960 by Kennedy to serve nationally as the director of his presidential campaign. His election planning in key primary states such as Wisconsin and West Virginia convinced many in the party that Kennedy's Catholicism was not a problem.

O'Brien developed a new presidential party. He collected information about each convention delegate and alternate delegate, and communicated frequently with each delegate's liaisons. O'Brien was appointed in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson to serve nationally as the director of his presidential campaign. In 1968, O'Brien served as one of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign advisors. After Kennedy was assassinated, Vice President Hubert Humphrey appointed O'Brien to serve nationally as the director of his presidential campaign and by Howard Hughes to serve in Washington as his public-policy lobbyist.

Committed to the principle that political parties are fundamental to the American political process, O'Brien was elected in 1968 and in 1970 by the DNC to serve as its national chairman. John H. Meier, a former business advisor to Hughes, collaborated with Humphrey and others to use Donald Nixon to feed misinformation to his brother, the President.

According to Meier, he told Donald that he was sure the Democrats would win the election since they had a lot of information on Richard Nixon's illicit dealings with Howard Hughes that had never been released, and that O'Brien had the information.[1] (O'Brien didn't actually have any documents, but Meier wanted Richard Nixon to think he did.) Donald then called his brother and told him that Meier gave the Democrats all the Hughes information that could destroy him (Richard Nixon) and that O'Brien had it.[2]

During the 1972 presidential election, O'Brien was the top advisor to George McGovern. During the Thomas Eagleton affair, his name was mentioned as the possible vice presidential replacement. This position later went to Sargent Shriver.

On June 17, 1972, O'Brien's office in the Watergate complex was broken into during the Watergate scandal that followed, which ultimately led to the resignation of President Nixon.

The DNC Lawrence O'Brien Award was created in 1992 by his family and the Democratic Party leaders to acknowledge the many years of service he gave to the party and his belief in the importance of volunteer contribution.

O'Brien was appointed in 1975 by the National Basketball Association as its commissioner until 1984. He went on to successfully direct the ABA–NBA merger and negotiate television-broadcast agreements with CBS Television while seeing game attendance significantly increase. After retirement, in honor of his service to the sport, the NBA Championship Trophy was renamed as the Larry O'Brien NBA Championship Trophy.

However, his league was troubled by public relations issues, especially after the merger. The NBA was looked down on by many fans and reporters, who believed that most NBA players used illegal drugs as well as other racial stereotypes. O'Brien pushed for an anti-drug agreement with the NBA Players Association in order to appease people and clear up this image, which was later reached successfully.

O'Brien also pushed for the league to move its TV contract from ABC to CBS; in the aftermath of this, ABC Sports chief Roone Arledge decimated CBS's NBA ratings via counter-programming. CBS later used a new contract to move around, show on tape-delayed coverage (most famously Game 6 of the 1980 NBA Finals), or simply ignore NBA postseason games.

O'Brien was also generally pushed by his staff into many of his good decisions, including the expanded All-Star Weekend, most notably by his successor NBA David Stern. Many consider Stern the driving force behind expanded (and non-haphazard) TV contracts with CBS and cable networks and the rise in game attendance, as well as several crucial issues that predicated the rise of the NBA in the early 1980s.[4]

O'Brien was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, located at his birthplace, Springfield, Massachusetts.

• "Volunteers are essential to the success of any political campaign. There is no such thing as having a surplus of volunteers", O'Brien, 1960 campaign manual of President Kennedy.
• "I'm proud to be a politician. Politics is the art of the possible and it is an intensely personal art", O'Brien memoirs, No Final Victories.

O'Brien died of cancer after surgery in Manhattan, New York, on September 28, 1990, at the age of 73, and was interred in St. Michaels Cemetery in Springfield, Massachusetts.

• Oral History Interviews with Lawrence O'Brien, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
• Appearances on C-SPAN