DA's Race Centers Around Harshbarger

By most accounts, L. Scott Harshbarger'64 has already cleared the highest hurdle standing between him and the Middlesex County District Attorney's office. He won the September 14, Democratic primary in a landslide, besting three opponents, including the 23-year incumbent.

Since then, each of the vanquished candidates has endorsed Harshbarger, and in a predominantly Democratic Middlesex County--which includes Cambridge and 53 other cities and towns--that usually assures victory.

Furthermore, Gay Carbone, Harshbarger's Republican opponent, is not mounting a full scale campaign. At this point the Boston lawyer has decided in spend no more than about 20 hours a week, saying "you can't leave your clients just because you're running for District Attorney."

And he is not going to devote much funding to the effort either. "My feeling is that when you're running for DA, you ought not to be taking money from people, he explains.

In addition, Harshbarger easily outdistanced Carbone in their previous head-on combat. Both ran for the Democratic nomination for Middlesex County District Attorney four years ago, and while Harshbarger came within a few hundred votes of winning. Carbone finished last.

Yet Harshbarger says this is the most unpleasant campaign he has ever been in. The reason, he says, is Carbone's tactics. The conservative convert to the GOP has, through newspaper articles and public debates, launched a negative campaign against the liberal Democrat. "This is a nasty, gutter-level campaign. Never before have I been in a campaign where a guy who knows he has no shot of winning has launched this sort of desperation show," Harshbarger says.

Carbone has made the key weapons of his campaign a series of attacks on his opponent's character and qualifications. He brings up the fact that, while in private law. Harshbarger defended one of three Boston doctors recently convicted of rape. This he says shows a misplaced sense of justice.

Carbone also charges that Harshbarger is untrustworthy. As proof, he notes that when Harshbarger joined the State Ethics Commission shortly after losing the 1978 election he signed a letter promising that he would not run for public office for at least two years after leaving the organization Harshbarger started his bid for the DA's office a little more than a year after leaving the commission.

The Republican further argues that Harshbarger is not fit to be DA in the state's most populous county, because he has never prosecuted a criminal case. Before his 1978 bid for DA. Harshbarger worked in the state Attorney General's office, dealing largely with consumer and civil laws.

And finally, Carbone says that Harshberger, unlike the district, is "ultra-liberal." The former Harvard football player has maintained many of the school's traditionally liberal ties, and he has allied himself with leading progressive politicians, including Democratic gubernatorial candidate. Michael S. Dukakis and State Senator George Bachrach.

Open-ended Mandate

Harshbarger does not deny the facts in the personal charges, but he denies their significance. Of the rape case, he says that as a lawyer in a private firm, he had an obligation to take on the request. Of the circumstances surrounding his transition from the ethics commission to polities, he notes that the law only requires a one year hiatus between appointed and elected office.

As for qualifications. Harshberger points out that Francis X. Bellotti, currently the state Attorney General, had no prosecuting experience before stepping into the Commonwealth's highest law enforcement position Bringing up his own experience in that office. Harshbarger says. "I enforced laws that weren't used before."

When it comes to issues. Harshbarger takes the offensive. He has put together a 24-page action plan for the office, geared at increasing efficiency and citizen participation.

He argues that "I don't think the issues are liberal or conservative." He adds that "we're gonna be tougher than anyone has ever been in this county. We've had enough of this tough talk from people like Guy that you have to be a conservative to handle this job."