Northeast Warms Up to Play Politics

BOSTON —  Mitt Romney has not even announced whether he will run for governor of Massachusetts this fall. But the prospect of having this handsome, rich businessman--fresh from a high visibility stint as head of the Winter Olympics--on the ballot has spiced up an already zesty race, one of half a dozen hot gubernatorial contests in New England this year.

Party conventions have yet to take place, and primaries will span from June to September. But, led by Massachusetts, the political horse races provide a welcome antidote to a time of year known none-too-lovingly as the mud season.

“In New England, there’s not a heck of a lot else to do in the spring,” said Christian Potholm, a professor of government at Maine’s Bowdoin College. “Politics is an indoor sport.”

Five Massachusetts Democrats are determined to take back a coveted corner office on Beacon Hill that passed into GOP hands three governors ago. Acting Gov. Jane Swift intends to keep the GOP in power by removing the “acting” from her title. Until a few days ago, she was proceeding on the assumption that she would have no opposition from her own party.

But Swift, who inherited the job last year when Republican Paul Cellucci became ambassador to Canada, has seen her approval ratings fluctuate wildly in recent polls. An initial burst of fund-raising for Swift has slowed to a trickle.

Many in Party Upset With Acting Governor

And just as Republicans thought Swift had overcome the sting of missteps early in her term, publicity over a hefty retirement package she recently tried to arrange for her former chief of staff offended many within the party.

Then in swept the scuttlebutt that the head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee was thinking of moving home to Massachusetts--moving, as a matter of fact, to the very same corner real estate overlooking Boston Common that Swift now occupies.

Conveniently, Romney held on to another piece of land here when he took over at the Salt Lake committee: the house in Belmont, west of Boston, where he and his wife, Ann, raised six children.

In a poll of 406 registered voters taken by the Boston Herald last week, Romney crushed Swift--and any one of the five Democrats.

The wealthy venture capitalist--widely regarded as the white knight who reversed early scandals and engineered the seamless Winter Olympics--earned a 57% favorability rating among voters against just 27% for Swift.

The poll, with a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points, showed that a mere 8% of voters view Romney unfavorably. In the same poll, Swift’s negative rating was 53%.

Responding to rumors that top Republicans were maneuvering to dump her, Swift declared at a statehouse news conference late last week that “I guess I should be accustomed to powerful men trying to tell me that they know better than I do what it is that I should be doing.”

Beacon Hill Democrats and Republicans alike retaliated with stage-whispered humor that the “secret powerful men’s club” would meet daily.

Swift soon backed off, calling her comment an offhand remark.

Romney Still Weighing Run for Governor

A Salt Lake Organizing Committee spokeswoman, Caroline Shaw, said over the weekend that, while Romney was flattered by the high poll numbers, “he’s still reviewing the political landscape and focused on hosting the Paralympics,” an international Olympic-style competition for the disabled.

Many GOP leaders in the Bay State, however, were ecstatic at the mere mention of the man who in 1994 gave Edward M. Kennedy a serious run for his money in the U.S. Senate campaign.

“As soon as word got out that Romney might consider running, my phone started ringing off the hook,” said Republican strategist Charley Manning. “I’ve been getting over 100 calls a day--from Democrats, Republicans, independents--saying, You tell Mitty, if he’s running, I’m with him.”

His bold challenge to a Massachusetts institution like Kennedy gave Romney wide name recognition, Manning and others say. His father, George Romney, served three terms as governor of Michigan and contended in 1968 for the Republican presidential nomination.

Mitt Romney’s Games triumph--complete with a special honor awarded him by the International Olympic Committee--enhanced his star power, GOP leaders contend.

“Forty percent of the TVs in greater Boston were watching the Winter Olympics on closing night, and there’s Mitt, giving a speech to the world and getting a medal,” Manning said. “People here think one of our own went off and did something great, and now he’s coming back.”

Even with no word from the erstwhile candidate, the grass-roots buzz among Massachusetts Republicans sounds suspiciously like a roar. More than 50 GOP town chairmen have signed on to a “draft Mitt” movement launched by a splinter group from the tenaciously pro-Swift state party.

“It’s not unhealthy to have differences of opinion or support for different candidates within the grass roots of the party, but the party leadership needs to be unified behind one candidate--and we are,” said Kerry Murphy Healey, Republican state chair.

Swift, said Healey, “is not looking for an out. She is ready for a race. She is ready for a fight. And she has said ‘no thank you’ to those gentlemen who have suggested she step aside.”

But party stalwart Polly Logan, a former national GOP committee member, said the shift toward Romney is causing consternation. As an area captain for Swift, Logan is pledged to persuade delegates to support the acting governor. But Logan worked on Romney’s Senate campaign and is drawn to the charisma of a squeaky clean Mormon entrepreneur in Harvard packaging.

“He is such a decent person,” she said. “During his Senate campaign, I even got so I drank orange juice in the morning rather than coffee, and that was quite a sacrifice for me.”

Yet Logan said she is in no mood to drop Swift.

“Gosh no,” she said. “I think you go home with the one that brought you.”

All the uproar among Republicans in Massachusetts has not drowned out the clamor among Democrats here. Just to liven things up--and presumably also to get himself elected--former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich parachuted into Democratic caucuses here last month to declare himself a candidate for governor.

Like Romney, Brandeis University professor Reich has never won an election. But his rogue status, Rhodes Scholar rhetoric and liberal philosophy immediately gave him a boost over businessman Steve Grossman, a former Democratic National Committee chairman who also wants a Beacon Hill address.

To set herself apart from the pack, State Treasurer Shannon O’Brien, another Democrat, calls herself the “environmental” candidate for governor. State Senate President Thomas Birmingham and former state Sen. Warren Tolman are seeking the Democratic nomination as well.

In New Hampshire last month, Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen set off a near stampede when she announced that she would run for the U.S. Senate.

Three members of Shaheen’s party leaped up to say they would seek her job--fighting a lineup, currently, of four Republicans who want the office. Not to be outdone--or barely so--Rhode Island has three Democrats and three Republicans vying for the open seat of outgoing Gov. Lincoln Almond, a Republican who is barred by term limits from seeking reelection.

Fulfilling a promise to voters--and his wife--that he would quit politics after two terms, Gov. Angus King of Maine, an independent, will set off on a yearlong Winnebago tour of the U.S. with his family in November. Eight candidates--including four Republicans, two independents, a Democrat and a Green--hope to succeed King.

In yet another open contest, a more refined race is underway in Vermont, where one Democrat, one Republican and one Progressive are pursuing the vacancy created by popular, five-term Gov. Howard Dean, a Democrat who is exploring a presidential run.

Finishing his second term, Republican Gov. John Rowland of Connecticut has not indicated whether he will run again--but two Democrats are in a tooth-and-nail battle for their party’s nomination.

Still, the Massachusetts race remains the most intriguing--in part because the leading candidate has not so much as declared. That minor detail has not stopped supporters here from touting Romney not merely as their possible next governor but as a natural to move from Beacon Hill to Pennsylvania Avenue.

“This is Massachusetts,” said Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman who teaches at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “People here assume that if you are governor of Massachusetts, you ought to be president.”