A Big Life, All Too Brief: Remembering Chris Condon, Champion of Working Families

Chris Condon died on Jan. 30 at the age of 46. The cancer he believed he had beaten the year before returned, and it took him. He leaves his wife, Meghan, and their children, Cam and Claire, whom he spoke of with wonder and pride.

Condon was a union organizer and political strategist, and for years he was at the center of Massachusetts fights over how people who do the state's hardest jobs are treated: social workers, health care workers, educators. The causes he pushed were concrete. He wanted decent wages, better sick leave, stronger child care and fairer taxation. Behind them was one conviction, that every person deserves dignity.

Much of his work happened out of public view, and he preferred it that way. His friend Bridget Quinn, who worked with him when he was political director at SEIU Local 509, said he helped millions of working families in the state, and that most of them will never know his name. By her account, that was how he wanted it.

He was respected across the table as well. JD Chesloff, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, negotiated the state's paid family medical leave policy with Condon. He recalled no grandstanding and no BS, only honest conversation about how to reach the next step.

Colleagues describe a man who was funny and formidable in equal measure. He broke tension in meetings with deadpan humor, or by teasing colleagues he knew could take it. He loved to win an argument and marshaled evidence so well that taking him on was hardly worth the trouble. His command of data was such that he could read the crosstabs of a poll and predict the winner of a local election. Scott Zoback, a former state Senate staffer who now consults for progressive causes, said he hated being on the other side of Condon in political races. He was so good, Zoback said, that it made him question whether he was backing the right candidate.

Condon also recruited people, Zoback among them, to coach basketball at St. Peter's Church in Worcester. The role went well beyond coaching. He helped raise the kids: some he taught to drive, some he guided into and through college, and some he steered toward their first jobs. He sent a steady stream of notes asking friends and colleagues to help a young person he had coached, met, or overheard at Annie's Clark Brunch on Main Street. He would also phone people to say he had a crazy idea, then lay out a bold stand, a major organizing effort, or a run for office. People agreed, because he made them feel they could do anything.

Representative Jim O'Day got one of those calls in 2007. A social worker active in the union, O'Day had worked on a campaign with Condon. Condon wanted him to run for a vacant legislative seat and described the path to victory with such authority that O'Day said yes, and won. O'Day said Condon did so much for so many people without a lick of expectation or ego.

Khrystian King, a social worker and youth basketball coach, was drawn into that campaign and others, then persuaded to run himself, with Condon directing his strategy. In 2015 King won a seat on the Worcester City Council, the first Black man elected to city government there in 80 years. In 2021, Condon helped Jermaine Johnson, also a social worker, become the first Black member of the city's School Committee. Giving a seat at the table to people who had never had one mattered deeply to him. King called him a difference-maker and said that many people are connected because of one person.

On Wednesday night, some of those people were set to fill a memorial service in Worcester to remember him.