O’Brien, Romney Contest Enters Final Bitter Days

The final event of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics will be held in Massachusetts polling places Nov. 5.

As Republican W. Mitt Romney tries to parlay his pivotal role in the fiscal bailout of the Olympics into the Bay State’s highest political office, he faces Democrat Shannon P. O’Brien in a race that has grown increasingly bitter and polemic in its closing days.

On debates televised throughout the state, O’Brien and Romney have spent as much time attacking and interrupting each other as talking about their own platform, and at moments have resorted to personal insults.

Both candidates have criticized each other for running negative attack ads on TV, but neither has stopped the practice.

One Romney-sponsored ad portrays O’Brien, the current state treasurer, as a sleeping “watchdog,” unaware of special interests and Beacon Hill politicians filching the treasury.

Five days away from the election, the race remains close, with Romney and O’Brien still in a statistical dead-heat, according to the latest poll released by the Institute of Politics and New England Cable News.

But third-party challengers—Green Party candidate Jill E. Stein ’73, Libertarian Carla Howell and Independent Barbara Johnson—continue to make their presence felt by drawing critical voters away from both Romney and O’Brien.

While there are more than twice as many registered Democratic voters as Republicans in the state, there are almost as many unenrolled voters—registered voters not affiliated with a political party—as Republicans and Democrats put together.

Unenrolled voters in the state are traditionally moderate, and for both Romney and O’Brien the path to victory lies in capturing the political center. Both candidates point to their fiscal experience, and their economic plans differ only by degree. They agree on some key issues, such as MCAS, but take opposite sides on the bilingual education ballot question and the death penalty.

With third-party candidates at both ends of the political spectrum, both Romney and O’Brien have been careful not to stray too far from their respective parties’ traditional ideologies, lest they lose votes from their own parties’ bases of electoral support.

Go for the Gold

Romney has never been elected to political office—though he ran a serious challenge to U.S. Sen. Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy ’54-’56 (D-Mass.) in 1994—but he says his fiscal experience qualifies him to lead the state out of its economic slump.

In addition to saving the Salt Lake Olympics from financial disaster, Romney founded Bain Capital, the financial arm of the prominent Boston management consulting firm Bain & Co.

Romney is defending the Republicans’ 12-year hold on the governorship, but he is not the incumbent. He only entered the race this spring, when Acting Gov. Jane M. Swift dropped out.

At the time, Romney led Swift by 63 percentage points in Republican primary polls. After Swift’s departure, Romney did not face an opponent in the September primary, but he had to fight hard for his running mate, Kerry M. Healey ’82.

The state party chose her opponent, real estate developer James Rappaport, at its state convention, but Healey defeated Rappaport handily in the primary.

Romney says he would lead the state’s economic recovery by establishing regional boards to create jobs and targeting industries with competitive advantage.

“I’m committed to bringing new jobs to the Commonwealth. That’s something I’ve spent my lifetime doing,” Romney said at the Oct. 9 gubernatorial debate. “I’ve worked in the private sector. I’ve created new jobs here in Massachusetts with brand new small companies, one of my own.”

Double Jeopardy

O’Brien has already fought and won one tough election battle this year.

In order to earn her place as the Democratic candidate on Tuesday’s ballot, she defeated three other Democrats—former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich, State Senate President Thomas F. Birmingham ’72 and former state legislator Warren E. Tolman—in the Sept. 17 primary.

O’Brien, the current state treasurer, is the first woman elected to that position and says her fiscal management skills will help her strengthen the state’s economy.

She pledges to restore the secretary of economic affairs to cabinet status, reform the budget process and work to make the state an attractive market for business—especially those already in the state.

“By focusing on those businesses that are here right now, working with them to find out what we can do as a Commonwealth to cut their costs of doing business, to keep those jobs here,” she argued at the debate.

O’Brien’s “Smart-Growth Plan” also lays out a blueprint for sustainable development—managing growth while protecting the economy.

She plans to improve state education by reducing class size in the early grades, improving adult education, teacher training and targeting under-performing schools.

Green and ‘Clean’

After Tolman went down to defeat in the September primary, Stein is the only Clean Elections candidate on the Nov. 5 ballot.

But unlike Tolman, the Green Party candidate has never seen a dime of Clean Elections funds.

She had originally expected more than $3 million in public money, but she failed to gather the requisite 6,000 small contributions necessary to qualify, and she has spent less than $3,000 since the primary.

But she has remained in the political spotlight, and along with the other third-party candidates fought successfully to be included in two televised debates originally meant to feature only Romney and O’Brien.

Stein is currently polling at about 5 percent, but she rejects being labeled a spoiler candidate for the Democrat O’Brien.

She says the current state legislature is incapable of meaningful action and is heavily influenced by special interests.

“The biggest issue is breaking the stranglehold of big money and getting Beacon Hill back to work for the people of Massachusetts,” she says.

‘Small Government’

Howell, the Libertarian candidate, says she will veto any state budget larger than $14 billion.

This is the amount she says the state will have left to spend if Massachusetts voters vote “yes” on Question 1—her proposal to abolish the state income tax and cut off $9 billion in annual revenue. (The current state budget is $23 billion.)

“The only way we can create jobs in Massachusetts is by getting big government out of the way and dramatically cutting taxes,” she said at the debate. “Big government never creates jobs, it only spends our money and does so very poorly.”

Howell also says she wants to end all state funding for public education and give all control over schooling to local communities.

Fired-Up Independent

When Johnson’s motorcade pulls into campaign events, it consists of one vehicle: her very own red fire truck.

Driving the truck to and from her rallies is part of the 67-year-old independent candidate’s unconventional political strategy.

Johnson advocates decriminalizing personal drug use—though not drug dealing—and legalizing prostitution, which she argues will broaden the tax base.

She also supports repealing the income tax, which is on the ballot this year as Question 1.

—Staff writer Christopher M. Loomis can be reached at cloomis@fas.harvard.edu.