[2] Hurley was member of a number of social and fraternal organizations, including the American Legion, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, the Hibernian Society, and the Irish National Foresters.

[1] Governor Joseph B. Ely appointed Hurley to the state administration's committee which distributed federal New Deal relief money, and was aligned with the Democratic Party faction opposed to James Michael Curley, the powerful Mayor of Boston.

This faction was generally opposed to the influx of federal money,[3] and the party infighting meant that Hurley minimized the number of Curley supporters the committee engaged,[4] and that the distribution of relief aid was hampered by the ongoing dispute.

Governor Hurley's administration was a brief departure from the increasing ethnic conflict between Yankee Protestants and Irish-American Catholics in political machines, party control, and business influence which had marked the state's early 20th century history.

[citation needed] Included amongst his program of cleaning up the civil service were the regulation of labor practices and emphasis on individual rights.

Hurley further upset Yankee and Irish interests which had a long tradition of local representative democracy when he also approved a fifth form of municipal government in Massachusetts, called Plan E. This allowed for an appointed city manager and a city council drawn from a proportional representation of the vote, rather than a collection of majority elected precinct candidates.

The later in turn had long used the form of government in defending their interests when they were a minority and saw its abolition as a direct threat to their way of conducting business.