Joseph Napolitan

He worked for John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960 and Lyndon B. Johnson’s in 1964, and helped Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey stage an 11th-hour comeback that almost put him in the White House in 1968. Two upset victories helped Mr. Napolitan seal his reputation as a master of the long shot. In 1966, he helped the independently wealthy Milton J. Shapp win an insurgent bid for the Democratic nomination for governor of Pennsylvania against Robert P. Casey Sr., a state senator favored by the party establishment. (Mr. Shapp lost in the general election that year but won the governorship in 1970; Mr. Casey was elected governor in 1986.) In 1968, in a Democratic primary in Alaska, Mr. Napolitan helped Mike Gravel — a former state legislator and, 40 years later, a presidential candidate — unseat Ernest Gruening, a popular United States senator. After graduating from American International College in Springfield, Mr. Napolitan worked as a newspaper reporter in that city for 10 years before turning to political consulting. His first client was an underdog candidate for mayor opposing a six-term incumbent. The underdog, Thomas O’Connor, won. Two years later, Mr. Napolitan helped another candidate unseat Mr. O’Connor. His political dexterity attracted the attention of Lawrence F. O’Brien Jr., a fellow Springfield native who was managing the 1960 Kennedy campaign. Mr. O’Brien, who would later become chairman of the Democratic National Committee and commissioner of the National Basketball Association, made Mr. Napolitan a kind of right-hand man without a portfolio. Mr. O’Brien told him to come up with a title. He settled on “political consultant,” a term that was not in wide circulation then. Besides his daughter Martha, Mr. Napolitan is survived by another daughter, Christina Napolitan; a son, Luke; and five grandchildren. His wife, Mary, and another son, Jay, died before him.