Life of the party

Massachusetts Democrats can still win back the governorship in 1998. But can they reclaim their identity?

Talking Politics by Michael Crowley

This weekend, a troika of seemingly lifeless, colorless -- and, to some, hopeless -- Democratic candidates for governor will arrive at the state party convention in Worcester to answer the question so aptly posed by Ross Perot's 1992 running mate, the confounded Vice Rear Admiral James Stockdale: "Who am I, and why am I here?"

After all, since last August, Paul Cellucci has propped his feet up on the governor's desk, watching the state's robust economy inflate his poll numbers and awaiting the day this November when an apathetic electorate will, the conventional wisdom now holds, cast a default vote for the status quo.

Add to that the general lack of unity or inspiration within the state Democratic Party as a whole, and the three Democrats running for the state's highest office -- Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, former state senator Pat McGovern, and former congressman and ambassador Brian Donnelly -- sometimes appear to be on little more than a kamikaze mission. Indeed, to many, they are doomed to join their failed 1994 predecessors -- Mark Roosevelt, Michael Barrett, and George Bachrach (not to mention Stockdale) -- in political punch-line hell.

Yet things really aren't as bad as they seem. These Democrats may lag in the polls and underwhelm the political cognoscenti, but this campaign is still in diapers. The Democratic candidates are stronger than they now appear, while Paul Cellucci looks weaker by the day. Sure, the GOP has had a lock on the governorship since 1990 (see "Party Hardly"). But the issues that matter to the state's voters have changed in ways that now give Democrats a real advantage.

So the corner office can be regained. But a more interesting question is whether Massachusetts Democrats can remain electable without -- as they've done this year -- watering down their party's core principles. This weekend, the 30th anniversary of Robert Kennedy's assassination, will be a good time for the Democratic Party to think hard about where it's headed.

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Admittedly, when it comes to the immediate task at hand -- winning in November -- there's a lot to be down about. Harshbarger is reviled by many party insiders for his prosecution of several popular Democratic pols. Despite three years as a candidate, he's a dud among both Democrats and the general electorate. (Heck, Harshbarger was even tweaked last week in a Slate article on multistate lawsuits; the online magazine singled him out as one of the country's most ambitious state attorneys general, whom columnist Jacob Weisberg described as hyperlitigious "eager beavers.")

Pat McGovern is still having trouble making news and raising enough money to show she can be competitive. Brian Donnelly has essentially been an invisible man. Meanwhile, from his governor's perch, Cellucci builds familiarity with the voters as his campaign war chest swells to more than $3 million.

But Democrats can still stage a November surprise. The party's three candidates are all politically seasoned and well qualified: Harshbarger has a solid record as attorney general, exemplified by his popular battles against big tobacco and the gun lobby. McGovern has a breathtaking grasp on the stultifying details of state government. Even Donnelly, though still a serious long shot, is now running a more aggressive campaign and may be able to spin his work on Capitol Hill into a marketable asset. Critics say all three are hopelessly bland and boring -- but what does that make the monotonal Cellucci?

If these candidates have fared poorly in polls to date, it's because they are still largely unknown to the public. That's beginning to change. Last week, Harshbarger began running his first campaign ads, which lend some badly needed humanity to a guy who can come across like an android. This weekend, McGovern and Donnelly will have their first chance to tell compelling personal stories of their own. A dignified and energetic convention could serve as a booming shot across Cellucci's bow.

That shot would come just as Cellucci's stewardship reaches new heights of cynicism and expediency. Last week, Cellucci sent a clear message about the value of original thinking in his administration when he fired eight members of his MassJobs Council for breaking with his hard line on workfare. This came shortly after Cellucci abruptly reversed his years of opposition to raising the minimum wage, just in time for a campaign in which that issue appears popular.

There's more. Though he's a supposed junkie for the details of state government, Cellucci has timidly distanced himself from all the dirty work of the legislature. Will he veto a package of pay raises for the top lieutenants of House Speaker Thomas Finneran? "It might not even get to my desk; why cause heartburn if you don't have to?" he told the Boston Herald. How about his position on Metco, a state program that sends inner-city kids to suburban schools? "I don't really want to get involved in various amendments and the various provisions," he recently explained to the Boston Tab's Steve LeBlanc. "I want to wait and see what actually gets to my desk before making decisions."

Various amendments? Various provisions? Who do these people think Cellucci is, anyway -- the governor? At some point, this insulting abdication of leadership is bound to sink in with the electorate. And thanks to the bare-knuckled, if probably futile, primary challenge Cellucci faces from the well-funded state treasurer Joe Malone, that time could be sooner rather than later.

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But there is a broader, far more fundamental reason why 1998 should be a year for the Democrats: the party's inherent credibility advantage on popular issues.

Cellucci's incumbency is a final vestige of a public response to distress over jobs, taxes, and crime that swept Bill Weld into office in 1990. But as Weld learned in his off-key 1996 run for the US Senate, the public's priorities have changed. With economic resentment at a low ebb, voters now identify education, health care, and child care as their top priorities. All three Democrats have pounced on these issues, as has Cellucci. But guess who voters are going to trust?

"The fact is that everyone's going to agree on what the issues are this year," says Democratic political consultant Mary Anne Marsh, "and if that's what people are going to base their votes on, then Democrats in general . . . will have the advantage."

Yet while the Democrats can ride the issues already on the public's mind to victory, they seem reluctant to push the envelope further. That's too bad. Indeed, the party -- lacking an urban agenda, a coherent strategy to deal with welfare reform, or any clear set of prescriptions for the poor, sick, and homeless -- risks wasting a chance to reshape a political dialogue pushed rightward by recession and a thousand insouciant Weld one-liners.

Liberals argue that now is the time to address inequality, poverty, and suffering in Massachusetts; to invest anew in long-term social programs; to pay off lingering debts. There's reason to think voters are open to these ideas. After all, education -- that most unsexy, gratification-delaying of issues -- is hot. Tax cuts are not.

A statewide progressive agenda can yet be resurrected -- it just requires leadership. Obviously, there's no use in shouting tired old slogans that guarantee defeat at the polls. An intellectually ambitious candidate, however, could explain anew why improving everyone's welfare is in everyone's interest. A progressive as committed to principles as to winning wouldn't just chase suburbia's votes with tax cuts and timid policies. Instead, such a candidate would show the suburbanites that safe, thriving cities, an educated work force, and greater social equality don't just help out faceless people in need; they make the whole state a more stable and prosperous place to live.

A properly delivered message could not only pull back more independent voters into the Democratic fold, but reach the one million eligible voters who aren't even registered -- the vast majority of whom would surely vote Democratic.

And yet both Harshbarger and McGovern cling adamantly to reductions in the state income tax that would cost more than $1 billion per year, jeopardize future government programs, and -- worst of all -- tilt dramatically in favor of the wealthiest taxpayers.

Their devotion to tax cuts and the blind eye they've turned to the state's neediest citizens may have made Harshbarger and McGovern electable. But it has watered down their political identity and, therefore, their power to lead. It has made them tepid Miller Lite Democrats at a time when the electorate may be ready for pitchers of the party's heaviest progressive stout.

Joe Kennedy, once the great hope of Massachusetts liberals, wouldn't have been a perfect candidate. But his idea of a winning issue wasn't a tax cut, it was the moral disgrace of child hunger. Now Kennedy is sitting out the race, and we await the first words from the remaining Democratic candidates on that subject.

Of course, if Massachusetts Democrats want to continue their drift toward becoming a party of risk-free politics and big tax cuts -- a party that ignores the disenfranchised to represent suburban married couples with 2.5 kids and a Range Rover in the driveway -- that's their prerogative. But there's a name for that kind of party, and it's not Democratic -- it's Independent. Which is why, as they gather in Worcester this weekend, Democrats should think hard about the legacy of Bobby Kennedy, and remember who they are and why they are there.

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.