Sub It Out" Murphy.
That's the name I gave Art Murphy after he summed up his position on the war in Iraq. Murphy died last week. During his years as a political consultant in Baltimore, Murphy would take occasional trips to Jordan, a country he had great affinity for. (A college buddy of his was from that country.)
Murphy had come to know the Jordanian mind and knew Jordanians detested Saddam Hussein. President Bush didn't have to send American troops into Iraq to depose Hussein, Murphy felt.
"They could have subcontracted that job out to the Jordanians," Murphy said. "Sub it out."
Murphy knew the mind of Baltimore's voters - and voters in general - as well as he knew the Jordanian mind. Take, for example, his theory on why senior citizens vote in greater proportions than younger voters. You can officially call this the Art Murphy Theory of Stuff.
"It's because senior citizens have more stuff," Murphy told me. By "stuff" Murphy meant Social Security benefits, Medicare benefits, retirement homes. And that, Murphy reasoned, is why voters age 25 and younger don't turn out in great numbers to vote.
"They don't have any stuff," he concluded.
Art Murphy must have known what he was talking about. Numbers don't lie. Of all the candidates he acted as political consultant for, 85 percent won the offices they were seeking. He got his start working on the political campaign of his father, District Judge William H. Murphy Sr., better known to some Baltimoreans as Big Bill Murphy. Big Bill was one of the first black judges in the city. His son Art helped change the political landscape of Baltimore.
Most of the candidates Art helped get elected were black, and he made no apologies for blacks taking political power. The truth is, Art Murphy insisted on it.
I didn't meet Art Murphy until five years ago, but I was familiar with the family. I went to high school - City College - with his younger brother, Houston. I remembered Houston as a runt of a feller, not very physically imposing at all. Big brother Art was quick to bring me up to date on that bit of Murphy family history.
Houston, Art told me, had grown a few inches. And he's been pumping iron. "Little" Houston Murphy is today a hulking mass of a man. I got my first glimpse of Art's older brother, Billy Murphy, in 1970, during the great Baltimore school uprising.
