Former governor of Massachusetts. Born November 3, 1933, in Brookline, Massachusetts. An army veteran (1956-58) and lawyer, he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1962 to 1970. A liberal Democrat, Dukakis was elected governor of the state in 1974, lost his seat in 1978 to his Republican rival, and was reelected in 1982. Though he initially reduced the budget deficit and attracted business to Massachusetts, Dukakis vastly increased government spending and was notoriously loose on issues of criminal justice.
In 1988, Dukakis won the Democratic nomination for president. Dubbed the “Massachusetts Miracle” by his liberal supporters, he was at one time leading Vice President George Bush by an astonishing 17 points in the polls. He failed to respond adequately to damaging attacks made by the Bush/Dan Quayle campaign, however, and struck many people as cold and emotionally distant, especially after several dismal appearances in presidential debates. His wife, Kitty Dukakis, was also singled out for her alleged abuse of alcohol. His poll ratings spiraled downwards, and Bush eventually won by a huge margin.
Shunned by many of his former supporters, even in Massachusetts—where he had only managed to win 53 percent of the vote—Dukakis decided not to seek reelection in 1990, after the economic recession of the late 1980s left the state in a financial crisis. It was at this time that Kitty Dukakis publicly announced that she was seeking treatment for alcoholism and published a revealing memoir, Now You Know (1990). After disappearing from public view for a while, Kitty entered a program of study and earned a license as an alcoholism abuse counselor.
After Michael Dukakis retired from politics in 1990, he became a professor of government, working at universities in Florida and Hawaii before returning home to Brookline and accepting a teaching position at Northeastern University in Boston. His sister, Olympia Dukakis, is an actress who won an Academy Award in 1988 for her supporting role in Moonstruck.
Michael Dukakis