Ethnic Group Flexes Political Muscle : Dukakis Mobilizes Greeks to Organize, Finance Drive

The 12 burly men solemnly twirled and twisted, arms held high, dancing the tsamiko in a circle to the plinking bouzouki music of the Markogiannakis Orchestra. Cheering onlookers showered dollar bills on the sweating dancers in traditional Greek applause.

Suddenly, as the guest of honor arrived, the music at Nikos Restaurant stopped. Then came thundering cheers: “Yasu leventi mou!”--Hail, my little brave one! And over and over: “Duu-kaa-kees! Duu-kaa-kees!”

Up on stage, Michael S. Dukakis beamed. At one side stood the bearded, black-robed bishop of Chicago’s Greek Orthodox Church. Nearby stood Dukakis’ campaign manager, his closest aide and his state campaign director--Greek-Americans all. Before him, about 2,000 Greek-Americans cheered, many hoisting wide-eyed children to their shoulders to see the first Greek-American to run for President.

Dukakis did not disappoint. His only worry, he told the throng, was where “to plant my tomatoes” in the White House garden. And, next March 25, Greek Independence Day, “the East Room will be a very nice place to dance the hasapiko, “ he said with a grin. Then he repeated it in Greek.

If Dukakis played up his Hellenic heritage at the fund-raiser in this Chicago suburb last month, he had good reason, for the 54-year-old son of Greek immigrants owes special thanks to his Greek connections. To a remarkable degree, he has mobilized an army of Greek-Americans, one of the wealthiest--and usually one of the most Republican--ethnic groups in the nation, to help organize and finance his presidential bid.

As he heads toward the New York primary on April 19, Dukakis’ schedule is laden with events intended to tap those roots, especially in the New York City borough of Queens, which has the nation’s largest concentration of Greeks.

After decades of quiet assimilation, the nation’s 1 million Greek-Americans are exerting political power this election year as never before. It is a new chapter in America’s melting-pot story: The people whose ancestors invented democracy now are a critical base of support for a leading contender for the Democratic nomination.

Tried to Hide Background

“It’s a coming of age in some ways,” according to former Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, who said he tried to hide his Greek background in his 1978 Senate race. “I was paranoid about keeping it undercover.”

Greeks are undercover no more. At least one fifth of Dukakis’ $22-million campaign war chest has come from Greek-Americans, campaign treasurer Bob Farmer said. Much of it came in the earliest days, when it was most needed. And parties in the restaurants, nightclubs and homes of Greek-Americans raised millions more from non-Greek supporters.

Moreover, Greek-Americans offered critical core support when the little-known Massachusetts governor was hardly a household word. “When I got to Iowa last year, they were the first people we called,” Dukakis aide Mark Gearan recalled. The campaign even organized sessions in Greek to explain the intricacies of Iowa’s caucus system.

‘Hell of a Network’

“It’s meant people power, phone banks, dollars, staff people, emotion and moral support early on,” said Nick Mitropoulos, a Dukakis senior adviser. “It’s a hell of a network.”

The network began long ago. When growing up in suburban Brookline, Mass., Dukakis attended Sunday school for eight years at Boston’s Greek Evangelismos Cathedral. Although he attends church only on special holidays now, his early training had an unexpected benefit: His then parish priest is now His Eminence Iakovos, archbishop of North and South America, the Greek Orthodox Church’s most powerful figure outside Greece. “He is very close,” says Dukakis, who meets with the archbishop regularly.

In addition, Dukakis serves on the board of the church’s only U.S. seminary, the Brookline-based Holy Cross School of Theology. Greeks respect those religious ties, said Andrew A. Athens, a Chicago industrialist who holds the highest lay position in the church and is one of Dukakis’ most successful fund-raisers. “It’s one reason he’s held in such high esteem.”

Another reason is that Dukakis is no stranger. Greek newspapers in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and other cities have featured Dukakis’ dark, bushy-browed visage and lauded his political career for more than a decade.

List of 20,000 Donors

“There was no learning curve,” said Peter Bassett, a Boston lawyer who coordinates Dukakis’ Greek fund-raising efforts and who helped compile a donor list of 20,000 wealthy Greek-Americans early on. “He was known. That’s critical.”

The Dukakis story is more widely known now, of course. As he has told countless crowds, his parents both arrived from Greece as teen-agers, with little knowledge of English and less money. Within eight years, Panos Dukakis was studying at Harvard Medical School and became Boston’s first Greek-speaking doctor. Euterpe Dukakis, who still campaigns for her son at age 84, became a schoolteacher. Today, their son is running for President.

“He represents the best ideals for Greek-Americans,” said Anthony H. Diamataris, publisher of the New York-based National Herald, the nation’s largest Greek newspaper. “First generation. The best schools. Close to family. Religion. Honest. Works hard. He is the embodiment of everything we believe in.”

Dukakis grew up speaking Greek at home, partly because his father’s mother, who spoke no English, lived with the family for his first seven years. Although Dukakis’ mother says his Greek has improved during the campaign, it still apparently bears traces of the family’s rural roots.

‘Redneck’ Accent

“He speaks with a heavy northern accent,” according to Alexander Papachelas, the Washington correspondent for Grammi S.A., Greece’s largest newspaper group. “It’s provincial. Redneck, really.”

Even so, Dukakis is hot news back in Greece. Athenians celebrated with honking horns and raucous toasts around the Acropolis when early returns showed Dukakis winning Texas on Super Tuesday. Even less important contests draw inch-high headlines. “They woke me up in the middle of the night to find out what happened in South Dakota,” Papachelas said, shaking his head.

Other Greeks shake their heads at Dukakis. In New York, a popular weekly called The Greek American, published in the heavily Greek Astoria section of Queens, takes Dukakis to task for not focusing more on the Turkish military occupation in Cyprus (he supports United Nations resolutions on the area) and other ancient Aegean feuds.

Greek-born editor Peter Pappas complains also that Dukakis never emphasized his immigrant past until he ran for President. “People swear the guy was always roasting lambs,” he said. “It’s all very recent. Frankly, I think it was a fund-raising ploy that got out of hand.”

Greek Criticizes Dukakis

Pappas, one of the few Greek Americans to criticize Dukakis in public, says he is “like no Greek I’ve ever met. Every time I see him in public, he scares me. . . . He’s so absolutely cold. I don’t know what genes he carries.”

Another prominent Greek-American, who asked not to be identified, said Dukakis has used his Greek background to soften his technocrat image. “He never appointed any Greeks to his cabinet. His kids were not baptized in the church. He got married in a Unitarian ceremony. His wife is Jewish. The connections, when you look deep, are not there.”

Ethnic connections are nothing new, of course. No President since Andrew Jackson, elected in 1828, had immigrant parents. But John F. Kennedy had his “Irish Mafia.” California’s Armenians have rallied round Gov. George Deukmejian. New York’s Gov. Mario M. Cuomo is a hero to Italian-Americans.

John Brademas, the nation’s first Greek-American in Congress (there are now five in the House, plus Maryland’s Paul S. Sarbanes in the Senate), recalls growing up proud to be Greek in WASPish South Bend, Ind.

“I remember telling other children, ‘My father comes from the land of Aristotle, Socrates, Plato and Thucydides,’ ” said Brademas, now president of New York University. “ ‘Where is your father from?’ ”

‘Making Up for Agnew’

A less-illustrious Greek-American may be a better reference point. “In a way, Dukakis is making up for Agnew,” publisher Diamataris said. “We haven’t forgotten.”

In case others have, Spiro T. Agnew resigned as President Richard M. Nixon’s vice president in October, 1973, hours before pleading no contest to income tax evasion. Greek-Americans are quick to point out now that Agnew’s name was Anglicized, that his mother wasn’t even Greek, and that he was an Episcopalian anyway.

But Agnew, a Republican, was popular with Greek-Americans while in office. One reason is they tend to be conservative and usually vote Republican, according to Charles Moskos, a Northwestern University sociologist who has studied the Greek-American community and says they are America’s second-wealthiest ethnic group after Jews. Moskos says Greek-Americans are willing to overlook Dukakis’ more liberal politics.

“Blood is thicker than ideology,” he explains.

Cheers May Not Mean Votes

Not always. Although Dukakis was wildly cheered at the annual convention of AHEPA, the nation’s largest Greek-American civic organization, in New Orleans last August, some Greek-Americans believe the applause may stop in the voting booth. “I can think of lots of Greek Americans who say: ‘I’m glad he’s running, but I’m voting for George Bush,’ ” said Elias Vlanton, AHEPA spokesman in Washington.

But those sentiments seem rare around Dukakis. Campaigning in gritty East Chicago shortly before last month’s Illinois primary, Dukakis ate breakfast with two dozen unemployed factory workers at the Lion’s Den. The restaurant is owned by a Greek-American supporter. Later, he donned a hard hat to tour Metron Steel, one of the nation’s largest steel refabrication plants. It, too, is owned by a Greek-American supporter.

The next night, Dukakis dined on fried squid, uncorked a bottle of Mt. Athos wine and danced the syrto with his wife, Kitty, and a gaggle of waiters at Chicago’s bustling Greek Islands restaurant. Even his official campaign party, held the night before the Illinois primary, eschewed hot dogs and beer for vats of black olives, moist slabs of spinach pie and cases of retsina, a resin-flavored wine.

But it was among his 2,000 fans at Nikos Restaurant in Bridgeview that Dukakis appeared to dig deepest into his Greek roots. Under balloons and clouds of cigarette smoke, his supporters waited in long lines to write $100,000 worth of checks. Many were first-generation Americans, short, beefy men with thick accents and thick black hair.

“He’s Superman for Greek-Americans,” said Chris Sideri, a 62-year-old Greek-born restaurateur and former Republican. “He is in my heart,” explained Pete Retsos, 54, another restaurant owner and ex-Republican.