it. Nobody remembers his real first name any longer, and even he seems not to use it. The character is likely based on John (Up-Up) Kelly, an advance man for Curley who earned his nickname by entering rallies ahead of Curley yelling "Up, up, everybody up for the Governor." The Cardinal is a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. He and Skeffington grew up together on the same slum street but he has become a bitter opponent of Skeffington, believing that he has disgraced his religion, his fellow Irish, and his office. Kevin McCluskey is Skeffington's political opponent, a young and handsome veteran of World War II with virtually no political experience. Major themes Relation to Curley The similarities between Skeffington and Boston Mayor James Michael Curley are many. Skeffington's age and background, his worship of his dead wife, his layabout son, his antagonistic relations with the members of his city's Protestant upper class, as well as his eventual defeat by a much younger candidate are all features of Curley's life and the conclusion they are one and the same seems obvious. Author Edwin O'Connor, however, always denied this. The city of the novel is never named; but it is certainly implied that it is supposed to represent Boston (O'Connor also lived for a period in Boston). When a Boston newspaper asked Curley to review the novel he refused and said, "The matter is in the hands of my attorneys." When he saw that the roguish Skeffington charmed readers the former mayor began praising the novel, however, including in person to O'Connor. In a lecture at the University of New Hampshire on the book, Curley treated The Last Hurrah as a de facto biography of himself and discussed things that he believed the novel had unfairly omitted. Changing politics The Last Hurrah tells the story of the end of an era of American politics characterized by the "big-city politician" as exemplified by Frank Skeffington. In the novel, Skeffington lost because of the changing times during which the national government began to aid people in a way that only locals had before. The New Deal and its constituent laws implemented systems whereby the national government would "dispense money, jobs, health care, and housing." Franklin D. Roosevelt, initiator of the New Deal, "[substituted] government social welfare programs for the corrupt ward heeler's ill-gotten private dole and power source." This shift meant a