A Governor's Race Without Issues

Governor Francis W. Sargent is running scared. After six years as a liberal Republican governor, he is about to be swept out of office.

His campaign has picked up in the last few days, but the recent surge of support has probably come too late. "I think I can win," Sargent said at a recent press breakfast. " No, I have no new polls, but I just came from an MBTA station and I have the sense that the people are with me."

About two weeks ago, the polls were predicting a landslide for Dukakis, but a series of TV debates and a last-minute flurry of endorsements has changed the political picture somewhat.

Pollsters attributed much of the Dukakis lead to the anti- Republican effects of Watergate, but all of Dukakis's attempts to tie Sargent in with a scandal have failed.

Sargent is running on his record, and making no promises about the future. He says he has improved mass transit, liberalized penal institutions and increased care for the elderly.

Throughout the busing controversy, Sargent has claimed his hands have been tied by the courts. He supported the voluntary busing law that Judge W. Arthur Garrity ruled unconstitutional. "I responded by ordering in 200 state police, 100 MDC police and 500 National Guardsmen to keep the peace," he says.

Sargent says he has increased direct state aid to local governments by an average of 50 per cent, enabling them to hold the line on property taxes.

Cambridge, however, has received only a 4.8-per-cent increase in state funds, and has just authorized a 20-per-cent property tax increase.

Sargent's most important tactic has been to label Dukakis young, inexperienced and rash. Speaking as the "voice of experience," Sargent has been able to poke holes in Dukakis proposals, causing the Democrat to waffle on the issues.

"He promises to cut state spending across the board by 5 per cent and then when his aides tell him it's impractical, he promises to "increase productivity,' whatever that means," Sargent says. He attributed the weaknesses in his opponent's program to his "inexperience" and "lack of understanding of state government,"

He has erected a wall of experience between himself and Dukakis, and the tactic may have worked. The Boston Globe, which had never before endorsed a Republican for Governor, praised both men for their abilities last week, but concluded, "in these traumatic times the state should not abandon proven leadership."

Sargent's slow, careful speaking style helped him in the TV clashes against Dukakis, a sharp college debater. His relaxed manner added to the impression that the gray-haired 59-year-old was a statesman up against a young upstart.

But Dukakis's aggressive style kept Sargent on the defensive, refuting a flurry of charges against his record and his integrity. Dukakis hit especially hard at Sargent's appointment of judges who, he claimed, had been rejected by the governor's own screening committee.

"All my appointments were approved by a special select committee of the bar association," Sargent replied. He said that his screening committee had been instructed to give preference to blacks and women. That these judges were not picked up my screening committee does not mean they are incompetent, he added.

A Dukakis attempt to make a political scandal out of a $40,000 loan to Sargent from his wife flopped. Sargent passed it off as a joke and the press has generally condemned Dukakis's charge as scandal-mongering.

Sargent pressed the flesh well. At a press conference in Braintree last week, he shook every hand in the room though he was already behind schedule.

"Great to see you," he told each of the fifty people there as he moved around the room slowly.

Sargent never rushes in public, but his staff does. "We've got three times the organization that Dukakis does," Brian D. young '76, a campaign coordinator, said last week. "Dukakis can't come close to our 2000 volunteers."

Dukakis also can't come close to Sargent's financing. The incumbent has spent over $800,000, twice as much as Dukakis, who has spent most of his limited funds on TV ads offering him mass exposure.

Sargent has been able to organize mass literature distributions and phone canvasses in selected areas. His staff is also trying a new gimmick--the standout. People who support Sargent are asked to stand in the middle of important intersections at designated times to display their support for the candidate. It won't replace TV ads.

The planning for the campaign comes out of a six-story brownstone on Congress Street in Boston. One aide confided that around there Dukakis is known as "that dirty little Greek with tennis sneakers."

"You should have heard the roar," another aide says, "when the campaign manager came on the loudspeaker and announced Sargent had been endorsed by The Globe. It was fantastic."