Lomasney played political hardball and made many enemies as well as friends.
He feuded with James Michael Curley for 20 years.
In 1894, he was shot in the leg in an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
His assailant, James A. Dunan, blamed Lomasney for a dispute that he had with the Boston Board of Health.

The political scene in Boston was not for the faint of heart.
Candidates were smeared and threatened, and voters were bribed and blackmailed.
A common practice was to send aides dressed as Protestant clergymen to "campaign" for rival candidates in Irish Catholic neighborhoods.

One dirty trick of Lomasney would earn him a special place in Boston history.
In 1898, as district chairman of the Democratic Party, he was responsible for organizing the nominating convention.
He arranged for it to be held at 4:30 p.m. in East Boston, across the harbor from the State House, where the nomination papers had to be filed by 5:00 p.m. the same day.
His faction met in one room, and the rival faction met in another, with each faction nominating its own candidate for the state senate.
Both factions then raced their paperwork across the harbor by ferry and tugboat and then to cyclists, who pedaled furiously up Beacon Hill to the State House.
Lomasney's courier arrived first by several minutes.

After being elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1910, Lomasney worked with labor leaders on legislation enforcing a 48-hour work week and workmen's compensation, but he opposed their attempts to exclude aliens from their unions.
As a state senator, he opposed the construction of Boston's elevated railway.

To spite John F. Fitzgerald, Lomasney endorsed Yankee Republican Louis Frothingham for governor in 1911 and delivered 95% of the vote from his ward.
Like Lomasney, Frothingham was opposed to women's suffrage; during the campaign, suffragist Margaret Foley of Roxbury followed him from one speaking engagement to the next and heckled him.
In the end, the Republican vote was split by another contender, Henry M. Dewey, and Frothingham lost to Fitzgerald.

In 1912, when the Suffolk Evening Law School petitioned the state legislature for the right to grant degrees, elites on the Massachusetts Board of Education, the Boston Bar Association, and Harvard University objected.
At the time, evening law schools were an important path to the middle class for ambitious sons of working-class immigrants.
The first students at Suffolk came from Irish, Italian, Jewish, and other backgrounds.
Members of Boston's Yankee-dominated legal establishment took a dim view of such school.
One of them remarked that trying to make attorneys out of such people was "like trying to turn cart horses into trotters."
Lomasney campaigned strenuously for the school, and it gained the right to grant degrees in 1914.

At the Democratic National Conventions in St. Louis in 1916 and in San Francisco in 1920, Lomasney tried to have a plank added to the party platform endorsing the independence of Ireland.
Both times, his request was denied.
Lomasney played political hardball and made many enemies as well as friends. He feuded with James Michael Curley for 20 years. In 1894, he was shot in the leg in an unsuccessful assassination attempt. His assailant, James A. Dunan, blamed Lomasney for a dispute that he had with the Boston Board of Health.
The political scene in Boston was not for the faint of heart. Candidates were smeared and threatened, and voters were bribed and blackmailed. A common practice was to send aides dressed as Protestant clergymen to "campaign" for rival candidates in Irish Catholic neighborhoods.
One dirty trick of Lomasney would earn him a special place in Boston history. In 1898, as district chairman of the Democratic Party, he was responsible for organizing the nominating convention. He arranged for it to be held at 4:30 p.m. in East Boston, across the harbor from the State House, where the nomination papers had to be filed by 5:00 p.m. the same day. His faction met in one room, and the rival faction met in another, with each faction nominating its own candidate for the state senate. Both factions then raced their paperwork across the harbor by ferry and tugboat and then to cyclists, who pedaled furiously up Beacon Hill to the State House. Lomasney's courier arrived first by several minutes.
After being elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1910, Lomasney worked with labor leaders on legislation enforcing a 48-hour work week and workmen's compensation, but he opposed their attempts to exclude aliens from their unions. As a state senator, he opposed the construction of Boston's elevated railway.
To spite John F. Fitzgerald, Lomasney endorsed Yankee Republican Louis Frothingham for governor in 1911 and delivered 95% of the vote from his ward. Like Lomasney, Frothingham was opposed to women's suffrage; during the campaign, suffragist Margaret Foley of Roxbury followed him from one speaking engagement to the next and heckled him. In the end, the Republican vote was split by another contender, Henry M. Dewey, and Frothingham lost to Fitzgerald.
In 1912, when the Suffolk Evening Law School petitioned the state legislature for the right to grant degrees, elites on the Massachusetts Board of Education, the Boston Bar Association, and Harvard University objected. At the time, evening law schools were an important path to the middle class for ambitious sons of working-class immigrants. The first students at Suffolk came from Irish, Italian, Jewish, and other backgrounds. Members of Boston's Yankee-dominated legal establishment took a dim view of such school. One of them remarked that trying to make attorneys out of such people was "like trying to turn cart horses into trotters." Lomasney campaigned strenuously for the school, and it gained the right to grant degrees in 1914.
At the Democratic National Conventions in St. Louis in 1916 and in San Francisco in 1920, Lomasney tried to have a plank added to the party platform endorsing the independence of Ireland. Both times, his request was denied.
Martin Lomasney