Spin city

Overeager handlers, underwhelming rhetoric, and other explanations for all the hangovers in Worcester last weekend

by Michael Crowley

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that the test of a first-rate intellect is the ability to embrace contradictory propositions simultaneously.

If that's so, it took a real genius to believe everything uttered in the stale confines of the Worcester Centrum's press availability room at last weekend's Massachusetts state Democratic convention, where one candidate after another sought to spin a victory story, regardless of how well he or she had fared in the endorsement votes of party delegates.

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And from last week

Party hardly
Life of the party

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For example, Attorney General Scott Harshbarger explained how "grateful" he was to win the party's endorsement for governor by a paper-thin majority of 50.05 percent.

But then how did his closest competitor, former state senator Patricia McGovern, feel about Harshbarger's easy first-ballot victory? "I'm absolutely delighted," McGovern said of her 31 percent of the vote. "I'm absolutely thrilled."

Surely, former congressman Brian Donnelly must have been a little dejected to register just 18 percent of the delegates' vote, right? "Mission accomplished," Donnelly said, boasting that he'd won the 15 percent of the vote needed for a place on the September primary ballot. "We're very happy."

How about the bitterly contested race for attorney general? Senator Lois Pines (D-Newton) was so overjoyed at besting Middlesex district attorney Tom Reilly by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent that she called herself "shocked, shocked, shocked." How could poor Reilly possibly handle being on the losing side of this shocker? "I couldn't be happier," Reilly said. His showing was "beyond my wildest dreams."

(This, of course, was the precise inverse of the expectations-lowering spin both camps engaged in before the convention. "We're gonna get killed out there," predicted a Pines supporter last week. "We just want to get our 15 percent and get out of there," said Reilly's flack.)

Let's try one more. After state senator Warren Tolman (D-Watertown) blew away governor's councilor Dorothy Kelly Gay in the lieutenant governor's race by a margin of 83 percent to 17 percent and declared himself "overwhelmed," how could she possibly save face? Why, by declaring herself . . . "overwhelmed"! Like Donnelly, Kelly Gay said that making the ballot was all she'd hoped for.

All these statements cannot possibly coexist. If everybody has won, nobody has won. But in a way, that was the story of last weekend's Democratic convention. The Centrum was a vast wasteland of horse-race spin -- a candidate cattle show with no real sense of mission or principles -- that did little more than confirm what we already knew.

In the race for governor, what that means is that Scott Harshbarger remains the Democratic front-runner, but still wears a KICK ME sign on his back. Pat McGovern still teeters on the line between deadly cobra and harmless garden snake. "Brian Donnelly" will someday be the amusing answer to a political trivia question. Elsewhere on the party ticket came the not-so-shocking revelations that Pines has a minor advantage over Reilly in their nasty fight for the attorney general's job, and that Warren Tolman is finally making good on his long-time reputation as one of his party's most promising young faces.

For this they crammed 4000 delegates and every last political reporter in the state into an auditorium and forced them to eat hot dogs and tiny $5 Papa Gino's pizzas?

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As any viewer of MSNBC knows, spin fills a vacuum. And so with little real action taking place, the handlers ruled the day. At one point early Saturday afternoon, Brian Donnelly stood mutely for a good three minutes listening to his loquacious campaign consultant, Michael Goldman, reel off a dozen rationales for his boss's campaign. "Dorchester triple-deckers . . . peel off the votes from McGovern and Harshbarger . . . it's gonna be a great speech . . . " Goldman rhapsodized, as his candidate stared blankly at the floor.

In another defining moment, Dorothy Kelly Gay delayed the start of a press conference by calling her consultant, Jim Spencer, up to the podium for some whispered last-minute tips before she felt safe opening her mouth to the press corps. Displaying this kind of reliance on a handler is bad form, of course, but the politically green Kelly Gay was only doing what every other candidate is careful to keep private.

Channel 56 political reporter Jon Keller tried to fight back against the spin and shake the candidates off their precious messages. Saving his real fastballs for a tough interrogation of Harshbarger, Keller asked the candidate why 49 percent of the party's delegates still couldn't bring themselves to vote for him. The attorney general kept his cool, but in the back of the press room his temperamental press secretary, Ed Cafasso, groaned bitterly. "Oh, Jesus, give me a break," he muttered as Keller pressed his boss. "What did he expect -- 100 percent of the vote?"

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One thing you can say for the Democrats: they put on a better show than their graceless Republican counterparts. The Centrum's lights were dramatically lowered for marquee addresses, and two giant video screens flanking the stage provided jumbo images of every speaker at the main podium.

Those screens allowed for the weekend's only truly interesting presentations: a slick, powerful, and at times campy Ted Kennedy greatest-hits retrospective and a masterful Warren Tolman campaign video spoofing the Blues Brothers ("I'm a Tol-Man") that peaked with Tolman hilariously tearing up a New York Mets pennant.

If the Dems showed they could put on a slick show, they also threw a good party. On Friday night, the Carmen's Union hosted an open-bar affair (God bless them) at the Palladium, a downtown nightclub near the Centrum.

Disappointingly, the temptations of an open bar didn't cause any prominent party officials to get publicly hammered. To the contrary, a sweaty Ray Flynn jogged into the club and, weirdly, could be seen pressing the flesh under the sultry red lighting of an upstairs lounge with the words club retro scripted on the wall.

The unexpected cameo of the night came from Brian O'Connor, former press secretary to Representative Joe Kennedy. Poor Brian was back from several months in California after working on the doomed gubernatorial campaign of Al Checci, the man who'd dropped $40 million dollars, only to finish -- dohh! -- last in a three-way primary last Tuesday. (The dapper O'Connor, sporting a healthy Golden State tan, said he has yet to line up a new gig.)

The booze flowed until well past 1 a.m. at the Palladium, where an R&B band played spirited, if familiar, Commitments-style hits for a healthy crowd of delegates and campaign aides -- particularly junior ones. Indeed, on a night for the Travis Bickles of the world to gaze forlornly at their Betsys, it was, as one political handler put it, "intern heaven out there."

Of course, in the heat of a campaign, a late night like that doesn't come without a price. Staggering past the press riser the next morning, one bleary-eyed top campaign aide gazed at his previous night's drinking partner and asked simply, "Why did I do that?"

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Over the weekend, one searched for signs of what exactly it is that the Massachusetts Democratic Party stands for. It wasn't easy.

A few themes appeared again and again in the candidates' speeches: HMOs are evil, education is important, health care and child care must be expanded. But almost no one strayed from this familiar set of no-lose issues into braver territory.

Perhaps the most admirably unfashionable speech of all was delivered by Dorothy Kelly Gay, who urged "compassion for the hungry, the homeless, and the working poor," denounced the atrocity of child hunger in Massachusetts, and called for universal health care.

Given that most Massachusetts voters are moderate independents, Democrats might have trouble electing candidates with platforms like that. But did it strike anyone as odd that at a Massachusetts state Democratic convention -- surely one of the most liberal gatherings in the country -- those basic themes from which the party has historically drawn its moral strength were relegated to the address of a harmless grandmother?

(Not so harmless, actually: Kelly Gay alienated some delegates with a strikingly sharp flier attacking Warren Tolman for engineering a 1996 mutual-fund industry tax cut and then taking $60,000 in campaign contributions from industry executives. "That was uncalled for," state senator Mark Pacheco could be overhead telling Tolman on Saturday night. "If we're doing this to each other in June, how are we going to win in November?")

In his main-attraction speech on Saturday, Scott Harshbarger did start out by pushing a few bright red Democratic buttons, quickly name-checking Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King at the outset of his speech. But those high ideals were soon lost in a cotton-candy swirl of Seinfeld, Hogan's Heroes, and Bulworth references aimed at remaking the mechanical Harshbarger into a more lovable guy.

Harshbarger's Cellucci-bashing standup routine did seek to present an intellectual core -- a clear enunciation of what defines his candidacy -- but it's hard to say what, exactly, he came up with. Harshbarger's list of "the people and causes we stand for" includes "working families," "children," "the elderly," "immigrants," "crime victims," "the environment," "clean elections," "every woman's right to choose," "equal rights for everyone."

Not bad. While he was at it, he might also have declared his resolute support for puppies, long weekends, and fluffy pillows. Which brings to mind something the columnist Michael Kinsley once wrote: "A good test of political seriousness is whether anyone opposes what you have to say," he observed. Now, it's possible that somebody out there is out to get "children" or "the elderly" -- but can't a Democratic leader do better than this?

Meanwhile, standing before a highly liberal corps of Democratic activists, Harshbarger made nary a reference to the boldest and most controversial aspect of his campaign: a $1.5 billion-per-year tax cut plan. It would have been interesting to know whether this regressive and excessive proposal is something "we stand for" as well.

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Might Paul Cellucci have watched last weekend's Democratic festivities with slight unease? Harshbarger took no real lumps at the convention, and with less than 100 days to go until the September primary, it's beginning to look as if he could enter the general election relatively unscathed. Pat McGovern has yet to establish a clear rationale for her candidacy. And Brian Donnelly may have to resort to conducting an underground nuclear test if he hopes to be taken seriously.

McGovern's last, best hope may lie with primary debates, the first of which was scheduled for both parties this week by a local media consortium. McGovern has many drawbacks as a candidate: she comes across as frumpy and agitated on television, she lacks the patience for photo-op BS, she holds no news-making public office, and she lacks the money for a major ad blitz. But her strength lies in her substance. In a debate setting, her mastery of state policy ought to shine. If McGovern doesn't make something happen soon, though, she may well face pressure to clear the way so that Harshbarger can run full speed at Cellucci.

Indeed, even as Harshbarger now begins to target Cellucci in the hope that he can leave fractious Democratic party politics behind him, Cellucci's own primary opponent is unveiling his first campaign ads -- the first of many to come from state treasurer Joe Malone, who has more than $1.3 million in his campaign account.

Democrats interested in a serious and substantive primary debate will root for Pat McGovern to hit her stride rather than pull up limping. But the thought of a sharp attack from Malone coupled with an unobstructed run by Harshbarger is mighty appealing, too. Why, it's almost enough to make Cellucci an underdog. That's how Harshbarger's camp is spinning things -- and, for a change, the spin is sounding believable.

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