NAHANT — Former Lynn mayor and postmaster Thomas P. Costin Jr. spearheaded racial integration in post offices 58 years ago, and he is confident the U.S. Postal Service will survive the mail-in ballot furor.
Hit by employee overtime and equipment cutbacks, the Postal Service is at the center of a political war zone during a pivotal presidential election year.
The Associated Press reported Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told lawmakers Monday that he has warned allies of President Donald Trump that the president’s repeated attacks on mail-in ballots are “not helpful,” but denied that recent changes at the Postal Service are linked to the November elections.
DeJoy also disputed published reports that he has eliminated overtime for postal workers and said a Postal Service document outlining overtime restrictions was written by a mid-level manager.
Costin said the Postal Service’s latest challenges are easily remedied.
“Let the postal people do what they have been trained to do,” he said in an Item interview at his Nahant home.
Lynn postmaster from 1961 to 1992, Costin was appointed to the job by President John F. Kennedy, who tapped into Costin’s political skills. The job came with strings attached.
“He named me postmaster, but on one condition: He said, ‘If I need you in Washington, you come down,'” Costin recalled.
Within a year of being named to the Lynn job, Costin was ordered by Kennedy to spearhead the integration of post offices in the Deep South. Costin headed up a team that traveled from one southern community to another, striking down edicts segregating bathrooms and drinking fountains in post offices.
At the time, the U.S. Post Office Department was part of the president’s cabinet and Kennedy told Costin to pass this presidential edict onto any southern postmaster’s resisting integration.
“‘Let them know it comes directly from the White House,'” Costin said.
When Lyndon Johnson became president after Kennedy’s death, he named another Kennedy advisor, the late Lawrence F. O’Brien Jr., to be postmaster general.
O’Brien drafted a postal reorganization report that became the foundation for the U.S. Postal Service. Costin said the reorganization set the stage for the Postal Service to keep revenue from mail operations instead of handing it over to Congress.
Costin said he rallied postmasters across the nation to ensure the reorganization kept small, often unprofitable, post offices from being closed and sought guarantees for postal pension protection.
“I wanted to be sure people in the old system were covered,” he said.
His comments on past postal service battles come as the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation last Saturday to reverse Postal Service operations changes and spend $25 billion to shore up the agency ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
The House Oversight Committee chair, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, authored the legislation. The committee on Saturday released internal Postal Service documents warning about steep declines and delays in a range of mail services since early July.
DeJoy insisted election mail is his “No. 1 priority,” said he will authorize expanded use of overtime, extra truck trips and other measures in the weeks before the election to ensure on-time delivery of ballots.
DeJoy urged voters to request mail-in ballots at least 15 days before the Nov. 3 election so they have enough time to receive their ballot, complete it and mail it back to election officials on time.
Costin said the Postal Service’s success in weathering past challenges is proof it can do its job and process ballots.
“They can handle it,” he said.
