The Boston Herald
Sunday, October 6, 2002
Tax talk is taking over
Election 2002/by Elisabeth J. Beardsley
Heavy-duty tax talk - hiking taxes, cutting taxes, even
outright abolishing taxes - has suddenly overtaken the gubernatorial race as the state's fiscal crisis deepens.
Republican Mitt Romney has morphed his message into
all-taxes-all-the-time, while fending off charges of tax squishiness from Democrat Shannon P. O'Brien - who has a
history of backing tax hikes.
Meanwhile, Libertarian Carla Howell, newly admitted to some
televised debates, is rising on the right flank with a ballot question to get rid of the $9 billion income tax.
The candidates are all publicly decrying recession-era tax
hikes, but at the State House, where the dollars are doled out, activists are already agitating for stacks of new levies.
And legislative leaders - struggling to plug a structural
deficit in excess of $1 billion - are increasingly desperate for ways to ward off hundreds of millions of dollars in looming
budget cuts.
Pro-tax and anti-tax forces agree: The tax hikes are coming,
and might well dwarf last year's $1.2 billion dive into taxpayers' pockets.
"It's all but inevitable - it will not be a trivial tax
increase," said Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts Director Jim St. George, who is organizing a drive to repeal business
tax breaks and ratchet up the income tax - again.
Added tax-cutting crusader Barbara Anderson: "We're looking
at tax increases for the rest of our lives."
Recovering from what some have called a weak debate showing
Tuesday night, Romney has tried to seize the conservative high ground by accusing O'Brien in every other breath of being
a reflexive tax-and-spender.
Yesterday, Romney highlighted the high-tax plight of a
Lynnfield family that's struggling to raise four kids on a $50,000 income.
But after a short stint on that high ground, Romney - who
raised the ire of party hardcores by refusing to sign a "no new taxes" pledge - will be back on the defensive this week when he
faces down the tax-abolishing Libertarian candidate.
Slated to take the debate stage for the first time on
Wednesday during a debate on WB-56 TV, Howell says she'll come out with guns blazing - trying to peel away Romney's
conservative base and force O'Brien Democrats to see the light.
Like O'Brien, Howell pointed to chinks in Romney's anti-tax
armor - policy proposals like higher taxes for SUVs and new "assessments" on green space developers.
"He's a high-tax, big-government Republican," Howell said.
"He's perfectly happy to be the guy in charge of a bloated, greedy ever-growing state government. Same with Shannon
O'Brien."
The sudden outbreak of tax talk isn't merely political
rhetoric - the new governor will determine the veto dynamics in the Legislature, and therefore whether and which tax hikes
can be pushed through.
Lawmakers last year struggled to scrape together the
two-thirds majority vote necessary to override acting Gov. Jane M. Swift's veto of a $1.2 billion package that hiked five
separate levies.
But legislative leaders were never able to round up
two-thirds support for even steeper tax hikes - even though a majority of members in both branches backed raising the income
tax rate to 5.6 percent.
Lawmakers are already whispering that a Democratic governor
would mean they could get away with hiking taxes on a simple majority.
In the state Senate - where a new president will be elected
in January to replace losing Democratic contender Thomas F. Birmingham - leaders are openly calling to hike the income
tax to 5.6 percent, repeal corporate tax breaks, and impose new taxes on gas and alcohol.
The tax-hike sentiment is growing as the damage from last
year's $900 million in program cuts begins to sink in, said Senate Health Care Committee Chairman Richard T. Moore
(D-Uxbridge). "It's not going to be something we'll be thrilled about, but it's something we're
going to have to look at," said Moore, a candidate for Senate president.
But the movement could falter in the more conservative House
- where members appear to be exhausted with tax hikes after going along with Speaker Thomas M. Finneran's $1.2
billion package last year.
Finneran said it's "too early" for a general discussion of
taxes - but he put an immediate spike in liberals' drive to foist new taxes onto businesses, which escaped last year's
increases unscathed.
The so-called "Fidelity tax break" and its parallel tax
break for manufacturers make an easy "symbolic" target, but don't involve a "significant sum" of money, Finneran said.
The last thing the state needs is to exacerbate the economic
weakness that's causing all the fiscal woes, said Finneran - the only Beacon Hill leader who will be left standing in
January.
"One of the things we should keep in mind is that certain
actions can do a lot more harm than any good," Finneran said.
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The Boston Globe
Sunday, October 6, 2002
Finneran key backer for O'Brien
By Frank Phillips
Globe Staff
On the campaign trail, Shannon O'Brien is stressing her
independence and her ability to bring reforms to Beacon Hill. However, her campaign is benefitting from the fund-raising
efforts of the man who has become the symbol of entrenched insider power: House Speaker Thomas
M. Finneran.
The controversial speaker is playing a key role in bankrolling the Democratic state
committee's efforts to bolster O'Brien's candidacy. Finneran has already raised about
$65,000 for the party's coordinated campaign, but plans another event in the next several
weeks at which he will raise at least another $100,000.
The money will be used for all Democratic candidates, though
the party's priority is the governor's race.
"He's very involved," said state party chairman Philip W.
Johnston of Finneran's activities. Only US Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry have committed to raising more
for the party's efforts to elect the first Democratic governor since 1986.
Because he is a lightning rod for voter anger at Beacon Hill
power brokers, Finneran and his backing of O'Brien have been controversial. Several of her Democratic rivals during the
party primary race tried to link her to Finneran, believing it would politically damage her.
Indeed, aides to Mitt Romney, her Republican rival, see
Finneran's activities buttressing their argument that O'Brien is a favorite of State House leaders who don't want Romney in
the governor's office, challenging the political culture patronage and cronyism.
"This is clear proof of the Finneran/O'Brien alliance to
keep patronage in place and the Beacon Hill crowd firmly in control of state government," said Romney's deputy campaign
manager, Eric Fehrnstrom. "Only Mitt Romney can bring change to the State House, and
Tom Finneran and the other insiders know it."
But a spokesman for O'Brien yesterday said Finneran's
activities reflect the broad appeal of her campaign and the unity of the Democrats, particularly when compared with the
gubernatorial campaign four years ago. "Liberals and conservatives, urban and suburban
voters, House leaders and House dissidents, Democrats of all stripes are supporting
Shannon," said Adrian Durbin, her press secretary.
Johnston also views Finneran as an asset to the Democrats
because, despite his unpopularity, voters view him as fiscally conservative, a profile the party needs as it faces criticism
from Romney that the Democratic-dominated Legislature is addicted to taxing and spending. "He
is seen as someone who believes in fiscal discipline," Johnston said. "That blunts
Mitt Romney's message."
Finneran was not available for comment Friday. His chief
legal counsel, John A. Stefanini, said Romney would have difficulty using Finneran's involvement in the O'Brien effort
as a negative against her.
"Polling data shows that legislative leaders are lightning
rods for people's dissatisfaction for government," said Stefanini. "But polls also demonstrated that it does not
transfer or translate into dissatisfaction for the Legislature as a whole or individual legislators. It won't transfer to
Shannon O'Brien either."
Finneran's efforts on behalf of the Democratic ticket are in
sharp contrast to the role he initially played in the 1998 gubernatorial race, when, the day after then-Attorney General
Scott Harshbarger won the primary, the speaker publicly warned the party to avoid allowing
the "loony left" to dominate its agenda.
Many saw that at the time as Finneran's attempts to undercut
Harshbarger, who was not popular with the Democratic establishment. But the speaker also later in that campaign held
a fund-raiser that raised $50,000 for Harshbarger's gubernatorial race.
Finneran has proven successful in leveraging his position as
speaker to raise funds, mostly from the special interests and lobbyists who seek to have some influence over legislative
decisions.
This year alone, Finneran, who represents a Dorchester/Milton district and has never faced
any serious opposition, has raised $262,000, building up his current war
chest to $532,000.
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The Boston Globe
Sunday, October 6, 2002
Romney aiming tougher image at gender gap
By Yvonne Abraham
Globe Staff
Having failed to win over women voters with a soft-edged, family
values strategy, Republican Mitt Romney's campaign has come up with a new, higher-risk approach to closing the
gender gap with Democrat Shannon O'Brien: Start swinging.
No more Mr. Nice Guy, his strategists are saying. In addition to
continuing to push issues of concern to women, Romney will now try to come between those women voters and O'Brien,
going after the Democrat more aggressively than he has to date. The campaign
believes Romney will be inoculated against accusations of bullying because they say O'Brien herself
has been aggressive in debates.
"Shannon O'Brien has begun to burn herself with all voters,
including women, with her trash-talking style, her slashing attacks," said Mike Murphy, Romney campaign strategist.
"More and more women are wondering if they can really trust Shannon O'Brien. The more
[they] get to see the real Shannon O'Brien, and the real O'Brien record in comparison to Mitt
Romney, the better we do."
In last Tuesday's debate, O'Brien repeatedly landed punches as
the Republican pulled his, apparently reluctant to seem too aggressive. But on Wednesday, Romney's appetite for
combat was much improved: He agreed to two more debates with O'Brien, bringing the total
to five.
Though Romney said he agreed to the extra debates because he does
well at them, his advisers are also convinced that what they call O'Brien's combativeness alienates women
voters and provides Romney with the opening to be more aggressive himself. And on
Thursday, Romney held a press conference to accuse O'Brien of favoring higher taxes, and
of wanting a return to "Taxachusetts." He did not leave the criticism to surrogates, as he had
been doing recently.
That aggressive tack will continue, bolstered by television
advertising hitting O'Brien on her record, including, perhaps, her management of the state's pension fund, which has lost
billions over the past two years. That issue was a constant in the Democratic primary campaign,
which O'Brien won by an 8-point margin over the nearest of her three rivals.
But the aggressive strategy carries risk, reflected in Romney's
reluctance to hit back at O'Brien during Tuesday night's debate. Go too far and voters - especially women voters -
will be turned off, under one theory.
"Women have been more turned off by negative campaigning, so it
may backfire," said Carol Hardy-Fanta, director of the nonpartisan Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at
the University of Massachusetts at Boston. "They need to come out with a much stronger
positive message of how families will benefit from a Mitt Romney governorship."
Romney and his advisers have clearly decided, however, that the
risks are worth taking.
Attracting women voters has been a problem for Romney, who lost a
1994 race with US Senator Edward M. Kennedy partly because the incumbent drew significantly more female
support. In a recent Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll, O'Brien led Romney 48 to 30 percent
among female voters. The margin of error was plus or minus 6 percent.
The gender issue is also heightened in this race because O'Brien
would be the first woman elected governor in Massachusetts.
While Murphy, the Romney strategist, downplayed the gender gap,
he also conceded Romney could improve his performance among women and said the GOP candidate will do
so by focusing on his opponent's weaknesses.
"We're working hard to get more votes from women," he said. "And
the more women know about Shannon's record, the more they move to Romney."
Women are sensitive to pocketbook issues, he said, arguing that
hitting O'Brien on her "tax and spend" record on Beacon Hill will make them less enthusiastic about her and more open
to Romney. "It's time to draw some contrasts," he said.
Murphy, who advised Representative Rick Lazio in his 2000 US
Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton, in which Lazio was criticized as overly aggressive in their debates, knows the
dangers of the tougher approach. But Romney's strategists believe O'Brien has been
aggressive enough to allow him more leeway than Lazio had.
O'Brien campaign manager Dwight Robson called the strategy one of
"character assassination" against the Democrat.
"This is an ugly, thinly veiled attempt by Mitt Romney to
establish any excuse to return to the kind of negative campaign that he engaged in during the primary," Robson said. "Mike
Murphy must have been watching a different debate from the voters, who,
if you believe the polls, think that Shannon O'Brien won the debate. Where he saw trash talk, they saw a clear
distinction on the issues of a woman's right to choose. Where he saw slashing
attacks, they saw a proposal to have more debate and more discussion on important issues."
Few political analysts believe Romney will overtake O'Brien among
women voters. But what is sometimes overlooked in discussions about the race's gender gap is that he does not need
a majority of women voters to win. More likely, he will seek to narrow the
gap among women, while trying to build up a significant lead over her among men.
Gerry Chervinsky, president of KRC Communications, which
conducted the Globe/WBZ poll, suggested that for Romney to diminish O'Brien's lead among female voters, he should
appeal to those women who have not yet formed opinions of him. The poll
showed that while 40 percent of the women surveyed viewed Romney favorably, 37 percent rated him
unfavorably, and 23 percent did not know or had no opinion of him. The margin of error was
plus or minus 6 percent.
Those who have yet to draw conclusions in the race could be less
ideological, more casual voters, and more receptive to persuasion from television ads, including negative spots.
"He's got to get to the 23 percent of women who have no opinion
of him," Chervinsky said.
Romney appeared determined to close the gap this time around. But
women seem unconvinced so far, despite his choice of Kerry Healey as a running mate, his high-profile,
late-primary season push for her victory, and soft-touch ads in which Mitt and Ann Romney
recall the tale of their courtship and he is seen in a bathing suit, horsing around with his sons.
But the ad has also drawn criticism, with some younger women calling it pandering.
The gender gap is difficult to address, partly because women tend
to vote Democratic in greater numbers anyway. O'Brien has also made more subtle appeals aimed at women, airing
television ads stressing issues like education and appearing among young girls
playing soccer.
"She is winning them rather than he is losing them," said Marion
Just, professor of political science at Wellesley College. "She is very believable on the issues, and it's hard for him to
play catch-up on that."
Romney supporters reply that women haven't seen enough of him yet
to find him appealing.
"The challenge for him," said Gloria Larson, a Romney supporter
and chair of the Boston Convention Center board, "is that he has been so successful in everything he's done,
including, after all, the [Salt Lake City Winter] Olympics, so I think that sort of
makes him seem at first blush less approachable than someone who has been in our own backyard
continuously. There is a lot of disinformation about Mitt. The more women hear from him, the
more the myths are put aside, and the gender gap will narrow."
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The Boston Globe
Sunday, October 6, 2002
Romney's secret 'R'
By Jeff Jacoby
It's the deep, dark secret of the Mitt Romney campaign, the
one he and his handlers are desperately hoping no one will find out.
He's a Republican.
Shh - keep it to yourself. Nobody's supposed to know. That's
why on the campaign trail, Romney never mentions his party affiliation. That's why the word "Republican" can barely be
found on his lavish Web site. That's why it doesn't cross his lips during debates, and why his
press releases routinely avoid it. (They identify him not as the GOP gubernatorial nominee
but as "Former Winter Olympic Chief Mitt Romney.")
Apparently Romney has bought into the received wisdom that
the only way a Republican can get elected in Massachusetts is to campaign as a near-Democrat. Thus the heart of his policy
on jobs-creation is an annual increase in the minimum wage, a hoary Democratic nostrum if
there ever was one. Thus when asked how he would cut a billion dollars from the state
budget, he doesn't mention one program, entitlement, subsidy, or benefit
he would end. He offers instead the oldest bromide in American politics: He'll do it by "cutting waste,
inefficiency, duplication, and patronage." Now there's a rallying cry to fire
the blood.
Romney on housing? Point 1 of his eight-point plan is to
impose a new "green space" fee on builders. Romney on gay rights? He wants more legal protection for same-sex couples.
Romney on abortion? His position is exactly the same as Shannon O'Brien's. Romney on gun
ownership? The answer he gave during the Springfield debate could have been scripted by
the Democratic State Committee:
"We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts; I support them;
I won't chip away at them; I believe they protect us and provide for our safety."
It's one of the oldest fallacies in Massachusetts politics,
this notion that a Republican must walk, talk, and quack like a liberal in order to win elections. Romney swallowed it in 1994,
when he challenged Ted Kennedy for the US Senate. That was the campaign in which he
talked about breaking glass ceilings and opening the Boy Scouts to homosexuals; in one of
his debates, he even made a point of dissociating himself from Ronald Reagan.
It was a losing strategy then, it's a losing strategy now.
Romney is not going to get to the Corner Office by playing up his inner Democrat. If he spends the rest of this campaign
trying to be Shannon O'Brien Lite, the real Shannon O'Brien is going to be the next governor of
Massachusetts.
When former Governor Bill Weld came to town recently, Romney
took pains not to be seen with him. Too bad. In 1994 Weld was reelected governor in a historic landslide; he could
teach Romney a thing or two about how Republicans can win in Massachusetts. As a
supporter of gun control, gay rights, easy abortion, and strict environmental control, Weld
was hardly a conservative. But those weren't the issues he stressed in his
campaigns. Instead he ran well to the right, never straying from conservative themes - cutting taxes, reforming
welfare, controlling crime, and executing killers.
Romney shouldn't pretend to be something he's not. But to
have any chance of winning this election, he has to focus attention on issues that create a contrast with O'Brien, not on
those that portray him as merely a paler shade of Democrat.
Far from hiding his Republican identity, he should be
seizing every opportunity to remind voters that keeping the governor's office in GOP hands is all that stands between them
and a return to one-party government. He should be reviving memories of what happened the last
time Massachusetts was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. He should be
telling and retelling the story of the Dukakis meltdown - the tide of red ink that drenched
Beacon Hill, the state bond rating that dropped like a stone, the three years in a row of
jolting tax and fee hikes.
When Democrats last controlled the House, the Senate, and
the governor's office, Romney should be saying, the Massachusetts economy paid the price. Unemployment raced ahead
of the national rate. Housing prices tanked. With no check or balance on Democratic power,
scandals proliferated - from weekend furloughs for first-degree killers to Dukakis-appointed
police chiefs sent to prison for perjury. Those were the days when citizens calling for reform
were mocked by the governor as "gutless wonders." As someone once said, the fish rots
from the head first.
Romney needs to spend more time trumpeting the issues on
which he differs from O'Brien: He is for the death penalty; she is against it. He is for English immersion; she is for
bilingual education. He is for lower taxes; she repeatedly voted to raise them. Each of those contrasts
works to his advantage.
But the biggest contrast of all is the one Romney never
mentions: He is a Republican, she is a Democrat. That R after his name has the power to attract an awful lot of votes. He
really should stop keeping it secret.
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The Boston Herald
Sunday, October 6, 2002
Planning a 'third' wave:
Gov hopefuls face might of Dems, GOP
by Steve Marantz
Shannon P. O'Brien is seeking to become the first woman
elected governor in Massachusetts - but behind the scenes, three others are waging the same battle.
Voters will find three other names on the ballot: Dr. Jill
Stein of the Green Party, Libertarian Carla Howell and independent Barbara Johnson.
The non-major party candidates have yet to appear on the
debate stage with O'Brien and Mitt Romney, but they're already telling voters who they are and what they stand for.
Stein, 51, of Lexington, came to the Green Party through her
medical research into environmental causes of illness.
"I have never had political aspirations, but I was asked by
activists within the party to run," Stein said. "I thought about it long and hard and decided it was unconscionable to say
no.
"Many people feel we are racing toward the cliff, with the
ruination of the environment, the unraveling of the social contract and the disparity between rich and poor. The political
system is out of step. It's time for soul-searching and change."
Johnson, 67, of Andover, was drawn to her second run for
office - she lost a 1987 bid for selectman in Newton - through her work as an attorney representing men in child support
and domestic abuse cases.
"I've seen such injustice and discrimination in the courts,"
Johnson said. "Guys lose their jobs and can't get the courts to lower their child support. I know one guy whose payments are so
high he lives in a strip mall and his wife lives in an $800,000 house.
"I've always been outspoken and encouraged people to speak
up."
Howell, 47, of Wayland, has protested most loudly what she
says is the media's deliberate effort to ignore her Libertarian candidacy. However, she declined to be interviewed for this
story because she objects to being included in a report with the other third-party candidates.
[In-depth profiles of independent candidate for governor
Barbara Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein followed.]
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