Could've been Worcester

Cellucci brings it on: the Firehouse bar, Dave Matthews, a slick video.

But Joe `call me Rocky' Malone survives.

Talking Politics by Michael Crowley with Dan Kennedy

FRIDAY NIGHT in Worcester, and the Centrum glows like a futuristic beacon in the dismal, asphalt-and-rust heart of the city's downtown. Floodlights bathe the building with a triumphant white luster, and a giant spotlight sweeps the sky. A cacophony of circus music can be heard from blocks away, courtesy of the JOSEPH TORTERELLI CONCERT BAND ORGAN -- a half-block-long calliope truck decked out with loudspeakers, flashing lights, and a swiveling spotlight advertised as having "40 Mile Range."

This is the clarion call for the 3700 or so Massachusetts Republicans -- including the one in a shiny black Mercedes with a CELLUCCI FOR GOVERNOR bumper sticker who blew past my colleague and me on the Mass Pike -- who have migrated to this city today for their 1998 party convention, where they will endorse candidates for the upcoming elections. The main event, of course, is the showdown between Acting Governor Paul Cellucci and state treasurer Joe Malone for the party's backing in the race for governor.

By this time tomorrow, Cellucci will have squashed Malone, 71-29, in a vote by the convention's delegates -- although Malone, having won the 15 percent required to earn a spot on the party's primary ballot, will insist on defiantly soldiering his way to the September vote.

But tonight isn't about voting or the party's identity. It's about getting loose, Republican style. And the results turn out to be a bit disappointing. Except for Cellucci, who's throwing a bash at the Firehouse pub across the street, virtually every statewide Republican candidate has rented out one of a row of boxy rooms on the third floor of the Centrum, where they lure well-dressed delegates with food and booze and shower them with campaign propaganda. But the food runs out early, and though bottles of Sam Adams and Heineken are selling at a healthy clip, the crowd remains quite sober.

The only good action takes place in the ballroom occupied by the Malone campaign, which has lined up the musical talents of Ben E. King. At around nine o'clock Malone takes the stage, affixes his trademark sideways smile as he poses for pictures with the singer, and, shamelessly, declares: "No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid, just as long as you stand by me." (Question: are we to believe that Ben E. King shares Malone's exciting vision for the future of the Massachusetts Republican Party, or just that he got paid?) Regaining his dignity, Malone then proclaims: "This isn't a campaign, this is a crusade." That seems more decipherable to the room's cheering throng of mostly white male suits (although I do notice one skirt that could be grounds for arrest in some states).

Malone is followed on-stage by his running mate, former talk-radio host Janet Jeghelian. Short and spunky, the bespectacled Jeghelian is likably exuberant: I later spot her at the side of the stage, breaking into a dance at the opening notes of "You're the One That I Want" and exclaiming "Oh, Grease!" with sorority-sister glee. Unfortunately, she delivers a weightless campaign pep talk loaded with empty words like wonderful and exciting; I don't think she actually uses any verbs.

Malone's bash, like the rest of those at the Centrum, peters out early, without even one visible instance of embarrassing drunkenness. Perhaps that's because it turns out that the real good times are rolling at Cellucci's affair, an unappealingly sweaty, fire-code-violating thing with flashing red siren lights and a line out the door. The drinking and dancing here continue long after the stage has been broken down at the Malone party. And why not? The front-running Celluccians know they've got more to celebrate.

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Saturday, convention day, 9 a.m. The delegates have convened in the Centrum's auditorium, where the morning keynote address is delivered by Congressman J.C. Watts, a young Oklahoma Republican who is a former football hero, a ballyhooed "rising star" of his party, and the national GOP's most visible black member.

Watts is supposed to get the convention off with a bang, but instead he sets the tone for the day with an almost unlistenable speech filled with empty clichés ("opportunity," "character," "leadership") and a religious bent ("America cannot shake her fist in the face of almighty God and get away with it") that undoubtedly plays better in Tulsa than in central Massachusetts.

It's a shame, really. The state GOP's 1994 convention was keynoted by then-US House minority leader Newt Gingrich, who gave an outrageous stemwinder that lambasted Bill Clinton for allowing AIDS-afflicted Haitians to immigrate into the US at will. Gingrich sounded like a little like Sterling Hayden muttering about our "precious bodily fluids" in Dr. Strangelove. Few imagined that would end up as House Speaker before the year was out, but his speech made for colorful listening nonetheless.

The best Watts has to offer is a strange call to achieve GOP goals "by any means necessary." Even that apparently inadvertent Malcolm X reference seems to zoom right past the sleepy delegates, who are roused to vigorous applause only when Watts gets to the important stuff: the malfeasance of NBA strangler Latrell Sprewell.

Soon after Watts, we hear from Bain & Company executive Mitt Romney. Still sounding a little sore over his 1994 loss to US senator Ted Kennedy, Romney talks about that race, asking rather unsenatorially: "It was fun to see him squirm for a while there, wasn't it?" In fact, we'd run into Romney and his wife outside the Centrum the night before, and he'd explained that his political ambitions aren't dead. "I certainly wouldn't run for governor, because there are already two guys ahead of me," he said. "I probably would have run if they hadn't run. I'm not gone, I'm just waiting for the right race." Can we look forward to Romney-Kennedy II in 2000?

After Romney, the real action begins: the Cellucci-Malone showdown. Today the burden is on Malone, who has struggled to keep up with Cellucci since Argeo Paul was handed the governor's job last summer. As his support has dwindled, Malone has taken heat from party leaders who want to avoid a divisive primary fight that could weaken Cellucci before he faces his Democratic opponent.

Just before Malone speaks, I get some idea of how that dynamic is playing out on the ground, when one white-haired woman in front of me turns to a grandmotherly companion who is actually knitting in her seat. "He's too negative about Cellucci," she declares.

Moments later, as if on cue, Cellucci operatives fan out to distribute a flier they've printed up. Titled JOE MALONE'S NEGATIVE CAMPAIGN KNOWS NO BOUNDS, it's a compilation of Malone-campaign broadsides against Cellucci ("These ridiculously desperate smears have come in droves," it says). The women read with approving nods.

Given his underdog status, I'd half-expected Malone, a master of political theater, to shake things up when he took the stage. He might have produced some colorful props. He might have strolled around the floor with his microphone, à la Liddy Dole at the 1996 Republican national convention. Something, anything . . . anything but what he actually gives us: a decent but forgettable version of his standard campaign speech, with such sleepy highlights as his success in merging the state's two pension funds. Even the Rocky theme song that plays as Malone takes the stage with his wife has the weak, tinny sound of a third-generation tape.

Then it's Cellucci's turn, whereupon a strange thing happens: the auditorium lights go down, the crowd hushes, and lo -- a huge American flag hanging high above the stage slowly rises up, revealing a giant video screen.

I'm suddenly struck by a feeling that is keenly familiar, yet unidentifiable. As the screen lights up with a slick Cellucci campaign video, the crowd begins to cheer, and I feel a small, apolitical tingle myself.

And that's when I realize what this is: it's the feeling one gets during the introductions at a pro basketball game. The visiting team always comes out first, the way Joe Malone did, introduced in a listless deadpan and with no special effects. But then, for the home team, the arena goes dark; the JumboTron comes to life with dazzling highlight clips and laser lights, and heroic music swells as the PA announcer whips the crowd into a frenzy by hollering out the starting lineup. Before a big game, the net effect can be like taking a hit of crack.

This is a key to the whole convention: Paul Cellucci has the home-court advantage. There's the masterful video, which catches the Malone people totally off guard. Then Cellucci's theme song -- "Ants Marching," by the Dave Matthews Band -- booms through with twice the bass of Malone's "Rocky." Finally, just as in basketball, the home team gets all the calls: Cellucci is allowed to go 10 minutes over his allotted time without interruption.

Cellucci's speech is just okay, but the video is so fantastic it's a wonder Malone is able to do as well as the 29 percent of the vote he gets. Even so, the Cellucci crew is back with a new flier: 29 PERCENT IS GOOD? The quick appearance of this printout, which includes five bullets spinning Malone's showing as a disaster, is more evidence of Cellucci's domination.

But the release also includes a line that the Cellucci camp might want to take back. Malone has been trying to argue that, like Bill Weld in 1990, he can come back from a convention loss to win the party's nomination. So the Cellucci flier notes: "Weld only won because he outspent [then- House minority leader] Steven Pierce by a two-to-one margin. Malone will not be able to outspend Cellucci in this race -- in fact, quite the opposite." Weld "only" won because he outspent Pierce? News flash! CELLUCCI SEZ WELD BOUGHT GUV'S JOB.

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Spirited as the Cellucci-Malone fight may have been, in truth there's not much of an ideological divide between the two candidates. Nor is there much internal division within the party as a whole. A placid afternoon free of graphic photos of aborted fetuses and angry shouting matches suggests that the once-vicious battle between the social-conservative and moderate factions of the state GOP has been won decisively by the moderates.

As recently as 1990, social conservatives dominated the party's convention in Boston, where avowed anti-choice candidates Steven Pierce and then-state representative Peter Torkildsen were overwhelmingly nominated for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively. That's when Weld and Cellucci, both of whom had taken a pro-choice, pro-gay-rights stance, were angrily shouted down with cries of "Baby killer!" when they tried to speak.

Four years later, when the convention was held at the Springfield Civic Center, the party had been Weldized, but the social conservatives still carried some clout. This time around, however, religious-right activists have been relegated to the booths outside the convention hall, hawking literature, buttons, and T-shirts. (It's not sold by the religious-right gang, but the convention's best shirt reads LORENA BOBBITT FOR WHITE HOUSE INTERN.)

Yet their fighting spirit is not dead. Evelyn Reilly, the crisply turned-out executive director of the Christian Coalition of Massachusetts, holds out hope that social issues will yet emerge in this campaign.

"Joe Malone, though I believe he's quite a bit more conservative than Paul Cellucci, hasn't done a good job of explaining it," Reilly says. "If he's more pro-life than Paul Cellucci, he ought to say so. He's just me-tooing, and that's not going to get him anywhere. I do think he's more conservative than Cellucci, but he's got to let people know that."

No, apart from a few noteworthy mentions of the death penalty by Cellucci -- his first in months, after vowing last fall to make it a top priority -- social issues were nowhere to be found in Worcester. In fact, few real issues of any kind were in evidence. Cellucci bragged about tax cuts and the economy. Malone trumpeted his record of efficiency in the treasurer's office. Neither man had much to say about health care, education, or job training. The word environment may not have been uttered once between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.

Malone, though, may have introduced a new issue into the campaign when he plugged the latest addition to his platform: a vow to "do away with the auto excise tax." That's an annual property tax on every car in the state, whose yearly cost to drivers is estimated by Malone's campaign at $340 million.

Paul Cellucci should pay close attention here; recent history shows that in politics, cars can kill. When a no-name small-town New Jersey mayor seized on the issue of auto insurance last year, he forced the state's popular and nationally known GOP incumbent governor, Christie Todd Whitman, into a grueling reelection battle that she won by just 2000 votes. Also last year, Virginia gubernatorial candidate James Gilmore blew open a tight race when he made a repeal of the state's property tax on automobiles a central issue of his campaign.

Whether it's an excise tax, government spending, or (his best issue) innovation and efficiency in government, Malone desperately needs something that can help him catch up with Paul Cellucci before the party's September primary. It's a tall order no matter what he comes up with, but the fact that he intends to try is good news all around. It's good for Democrats, who may yet undergo a divisive primary of their own, and who would have a hard time unseating Cellucci if he were able to start his general-election campaign in May. And to the extent that Malone's challenge shakes Cellucci out of his comfortable, unambitious state of stewardship and forces him to come up with new ideas, it's good for Massachusetts voters as a whole.

Meeting with reporters on the convention floor on Saturday afternoon, Cellucci offered a telling response to his convention victory: "I am proud to be a Republican, and I am proud to be the governor of our great state of Massachusetts."

Pride is what Cellucci's convention victory, with its reliance on aggressive stage-managing and spin-doctoring, was all about. But it is Cellucci's pride -- his assumption that the power of his office justifies his continued occupancy of it -- that could yet be his downfall.

This piece was reported and written by Michael Crowley with additional reporting by Dan Kennedy. Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.
Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.