They voted to schedule another Joint Convention for the following week, after the primaries, when the Democratic-controlled legislature would know who had won the Democratic nomination, with that individual likely receiving the interim appointment.

Smith initially planned to run in the special election to complete the rest of the term; however, he backed off when polls showed that he would suffer certain defeat to McCormack in the primary.

By contrast, Kennedy had just reached the qualifying age for the Senate, and his public experience was limited to a short uneventful term as assistant District Attorney in Boston.

[1] Kennedy had also been suspended from Harvard University for academic cheating, which he admitted in a press conference in order to pre-empt McCormack supporters from making an issue of it.

In the November special election, Kennedy defeated Republican George Cabot Lodge II, product of another noted Massachusetts political family, gaining 55 percent of the vote.

McCormack was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Massachusetts in 1966, when he lost to Republican incumbent John A. Volpe, the first time that the term of that office was extended from two to four years.

After weeks of McCormack's bargaining with stakeholders, the plan produced had broad support and eliminated busing between predominantly black Roxbury and South Boston, whose largely Irish population had fiercely resisted the initial phase of desegregation of the schools.

[10] Although no longer in public office, he remained a political insider and worked as a development lawyer in Boston real estate, while his friend Kevin H. White was mayor of that city.

His former political opponent Ted Kennedy, still serving at the time as Massachusetts's senior United States senator, fondly recalled their 1962 primary contest.