Two Democratic Face Offs

It's a classic Democratic primary to fill the U.S. Congress seat being vacated by Senate hopeful James M. Shannon, a barroom brawl well-matched enough to be interesting, and chock full of snide advertising, nasty charges and heated countercharges.

Faced with two candidates whom each seem to appeal to half the district, local political observers are, calling Shea-Atkins race one of the closest ever.

The two contestants, State Sen. Philip L. Shea (D-Lowell), the chairman of the Democratic State Committee, are diametrically opposed in almost every way; where Atkins is a wealthy blue-blood living off a Swiss trues fund, Shea is strongly rooted in the industrial culture of lower middle-class Lowell; where Atkins is suave, Shea can be brutish, where Atkins toes the solid liberal line. Shea wavers week, the ideological poles of the Democratic party; where Atkins is in with the party bigwigs in Boston, Shea is strong with the local pols in Lowell and Lawrence.

Each has a strong best, in this eclectic district, which has made this year's a race more interesting and more complen than most contests between rising Party superstars and old-time hometown pols.

On a map, the fifth congressional district looks something like a pserodactyl. Its tall stretches out to Wess Townsend, the westernmost Lincoln in Middlesex County, the body takes contains the affident, liberal heartland of Concern, Weston, Lincoln and Sudbury and the booming high tech area around Route 128 and Interstate 495. To the north, Lowell and Lawrence, two mill towns trying to stage comebacks stick out like a clumsy head.

In all, there are about 368,000 people voting age in the area to the 1900 census. While liberals hold away in the rural suburbs in the district's left-leaning mid-section, President Reagan's appeal to the blue-collar, Catholic vote--which is centered in Lowell and Lawrence--worked here in 1980. Reagan carried the district 44 to 40 percent over former President Jimmy Carter, a margin of 11,000 votes and two percentage points better than the state total.

Shea, despite a litany of last-minute legislative flip-flops designed to make him look more liberal which have been duly noted by Atkins, has an immensely strong political base in his hometown of more than 80,000 residents. As a former city councilman and Lowell's representative to the Massachusetts House, Shea is credited by Lowellians with bringing in millions of government dollars to fix up the city's flagging downtown over the last 10 years. That shot in the arm from the state and federal governments has in turn attracted business back to the city. Wang Labs has opened up a plant in Lowell, and the huge Courier Printing Co., which produces, among other things, every single telephone book distributed in New England, has bolstered the Lowell economy.

But of late, Shea--who has a conservative legislative record--has been getting into trouble during his showdown with Atkins. Over the summer, Shea has uncharacteristically backed liberal positions on the nuclear freeze, the Equal Rights Amendment, cuts in military spending, foreign policy in Latin America, and ways to reduce the federal deficit, the plans for the latter released last week in a 40-page statement released last week. He has shut up about the causes he pushed hardest for as a legislator: amending the Massachusetts constitution to outlaw abortion, killing gay rights legislation and supporting the death penalty.

Moreover, while he says he supports the ERA, as a representative in the Massachusetts House he didn't vote on the issue when it first came up in 1973. While he says he supports the freeze, he voted in 1982 for amendments to a proposed freeze referendum which would have rendered it meaningless. Shea would have added two questions to the referendum asking voters if they would still approve a freeze if it would make the U.S. weaker than the Soviet Union, and asking voters if the President should propose reducing minutes and aircraft instead of warhends.

In retorting, Shea has attacked Atkins for failing to blow the whistle on the worst excesses of the Senate President, Atkins buddy and legislative strongman William F. Bulger (D-Boston). For instance, Atkins, who a chairman of the Ways and Means committee is the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, did nothing to stop legislators who granted themselves a "Halloween. Night pay raise" two years ago without floor debate or recorded vote. Atkins claimed he opposed the pay raise amendment while it was in Ways and Means and that he "took a walk" while legislators held a voice vote on the raise late in a session that ran well toward sunrise. Shea said Atkins should have taken steps to oppose the surreptitious pay raise.

Shea also last month signed a pledge never knowingly to accept political action committee money in any campaign ever, and said he would resign any seat if he found out PAC money leaked into his campaign fund. He is trying to make political capital out of Atkins's refusal to sign a similar pledge.

Atkins has perhaps been more effective than Shea in his rhetorical attacks, making political capitol out of Shea's poor voting record. Shea missed one-quarter of all senate vote last year, including some on important legislator, Shea claimed he was sick with preumonia, but Atkins pointed out that Shea could have voted by proxy.

Faced with two candidates whom each seem to appeal to exactly half the district, local political observers are calling the Shea-Atkins race one of the closest ever. Atkins, with his long-standing calls for a nuclear freeze and for more federal education money, is running strong in the heart of the district, the Concord area, according to Genevera Counihan, Democratic Town Committee co-chairman in Concord. And Counihan, whose committee endorsed hometown boy Atkins, says people in her area aren't fooled by the new Shea. "Shea is much more liberal than I have known him to be," Counihan says dryly. "He seems to have changed most of his positions."

But Atkins is outgunned in Lowell and Lawrence, the other half of the Fifth District, big population centers which want more of the kind of revitalization Shea delivered for his home city. "Shea will take a good percentage here. Atkins has his work cut out for him," said Duke Juknovarian, chairman of the Lowell Democratic Committee, which four years ago adopted a policy of not endorsing candidates in the primary. In my 40 years in politics, I've never seen a fight like this. It's a tossup for the district."