Curley, Kennedy, O'Neill and Kennedy all came from the same urban, Irish-Catholic roots and appealed to the same liberal working class voters.

Boston Globe reporter Michael Kenney '57, notes that the district's demographics do not always translate into political capital.

Melvin H. King, an African-American, who for years was a Beacon Hill representative, threw his hat in the ring in 1986, expecting to capitalize on the minority vote.

Kenney wrote about that election in his book, The Race For the 8th a chronicle of the 1986 congressional election that chose Joseph Kennedy as O'Neill's successor.

King received barely 10 percent of the vote, with Kennedy and his closest rival, George Bachrack, taking significant portions of the minority vote in the Boston areas of the district.

The Kennedy victory came even as working-class voters--his most vociferous supporters--moving away from the district.

As areas of Cambridge and Boston attract more hi-tech companies (particularly in the bio-tech industries), the percentages of blue-collar workers and families as a total percentage in the district have been declining.

When Kenney's book was published, blue collar workers comprised only 14 percent of the district, as compared with nearly 25 percent in 1970.

The dynamic nature of the district's demographics underscores cautions from O'Conner.

"Labels don't do justice to the division of opinion," he says. "You have lunch-pail Democrats, Reagan Democrats who are very liberal on economic issues but tend to be social conservatives."

"And you have probably the most impassioned cadre of foreign affairs activists anywhere in the country," he says.

Part of the reason for that is the presence of Harvard and 59 other colleges and universities within the district.

Visiting student scholars and professors make the eighth "one of the most international of any district in the country," O'Connor said.

With the ethnic diversity, representatives like Joe Kennedy must often make select decisions about which international causes to support.

Bowing to the district's large Haitian constituency, Kennedy led the attempt to restore that nation's exiled president, Jean-Bertrand Aristede, to power in the 1980s, O'Connor said.