Leaderless

The real reason good candidates aren't running for office

If the conventional wisdom can be believed, then blame the dearth of candidates for the Massachusetts House and Senate on a referendum campaign to cut the salaries of state legislators by 50 percent.

That was the theme of a Meg Vaillancourt story in the Boston Globe last week. And there's certainly no doubt that the prospect of voters' slashing salaries from $46,000 to $23,000 this November is a powerful disincentive. "For $23,000 I had people laugh in my face," says State Senator Richard Tisei (R-Wakefield) of his efforts to recruit Republican candidates.

The pay-cut question is currently on hold. In an advisory opinion, the state's Supreme Judicial Court ruled last month that two technical provisions of the referendum were unconstitutional. The court is expected to rule any day now on whether those problems can be corrected in time for the November election.

But though the issue has certainly clouded the 1996 campaign, the fact is that the number of candidates seeking legislative office has dropped in every election since 1990, according to statistics compiled by the secretary of state's office.

The reasons for this decline are varied: a base salary that was just $30,000 until the legislature voted itself a controversial raise in December 1994; a campaign-finance system that makes it almost impossible for a challenger to raise enough money to dislodge an incumbent; and a shaky ethical environment on Beacon Hill that has resulted in a steady stream of legislators who are under investigation, on trial, or in prison. Cynics may note that this last problem is not new, but there's little question that it feeds a distrust of government service that's already widespread. "Decent people don't want to run for the legislature anymore," says Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation and the most visible leader of the pay-cut movement.

But perhaps the single biggest reason that fewer and fewer people see the legislature as an attractive career option is the predatory media environment of the 1990s, and especially the radio talk shows. Day after day, Howie Carr, David Brudnoy, Jerry Williams, Pat Whitley, Charles Adler, and others denigrate and demean the very notion of politics as an honorable pursuit. The hosts run the gamut from the gentlemanly Brudnoy to the outrageous Carr, but the message is the same: run for office, and prepare to be attacked and insulted.

"In these jobs -- by their very nature -- you take a lot of abuse," says Patricia McGovern, a lawyer with the Boston firm of Goulston & Storrs, and a highly respected member of the Massachusetts Senate from 1981 to '92. "But there's something beyond that now. Before it might be `Pat McGovern is wrong.' Now it's `Pat McGovern is wrong and is a bad person.' There used to be certain taste limits, but now there aren't any. The abuse level is decibels higher than it was 10, 15, or 20 years ago."

According to the secretary of state's office, 311 candidates last week filed nomination papers for the 40-member Senate and the 160-member House; 27 Senate seats and 111 House seats will be uncontested this November. That's a considerable comedown from 1994, when there were 387 legislative candidates, and only 19 Senate seats and 90 House seats were uncontested (see chart below).

But that's merely the acceleration of a trend underway since the start of the decade. Indeed, 442 people ran for the legislature in 1992, and 476 in 1990, when just six Senate seats and 55 House seats were uncontested. The 1990 numbers marked the revival of the state's Republican Party, which had almost ceased to exist in 1988, Michael Dukakis's presidential-campaign year, when only 359 candidates ran for the legislature -- 269 of them Democrats.

No one has had more to do with the rise in the decibel level to which Pat McGovern refers than Howie Carr, a longtime Boston Herald columnist who's emerged as a talk-radio star in the past several years. His top-rated afternoon drive-time show on WRKO Radio (680 AM) offers a daily potpourri of invective, starting with the introduction: "Hacks, double-dippers, and other leeching weasels, beware!" His show is Rush Limbaugh recast for the Boston market, with snideness and snickers rather than bombast and lectures.

Carr is as keen an observer of the local political scene as anyone around. Ten years ago, his Herald column offered a perfect-pitch combination of conservative populism, dogged reporting, and razor-sharp wit. But the wit has long since deteriorated into heavy-handed insult. Former governor Michael Dukakis, who's short, is "Pee-wee." Ted Kennedy is "Fat Boy." The obese former House Speaker is "George Keverian, D-Papa Gino's." Former Senate president Bill Bulger, who's short and slick, is the "corrupt midget." (That one has also made Carr enemies in the local dwarf community, which considers the term "midget" offensive.) When the name of former Boston city councilor David Scondras, who's gay, is invoked, it's accompanied by sound effects apparently intended to suggest anal sex.

"Name-calling on the part of a talk-show host has got to be a turnoff for anybody considering running for public office," says Northeastern University sociologist Jack Levin, a close observer of talk shows.

Yet Carr pleads innocent when asked whether he's driven people away from running for office. "Oh, come on," he says. "As Harry Truman said, `If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.' I don't think the talk shows have that much to do with it."

Given his macho attitude, it's curious that Carr takes some pains to point out that it wasn't he who dubbed Bulger the "corrupt midget" (it was actually a local judge, nearly 10 years ago), and that the Papa Gino's swipe had nothing to do with Keverian's weight problem (the then-Speaker got into an altercation with a customer outside a Papa Gino's in Charlestown). But it's Carr who has kept those insults alive, many years after the incidents that gave rise to them have been forgotten.

Carr, though, believes that the threat of a pay cut, rather than the threat of ridicule, is what's kept people from running for the legislature this year. He concedes that even with a $46,000 salary, "you can't pay the mortgage." So why is he among those who support cutting that pay in half? "I don't think these guys should be professional legislators," he responds, chuckling. "These people just lurk around the State House and get into trouble."

As Carr's off-handed remark indicates, the pay-cut movement itself is directly related to the media's widespread denigration of politics and politicians. Indeed, Richard Kraus, a state senator from 1983 to '90, argues that the low pay legislators have historically received is just another indication that the public doesn't value what they do.

Kraus, a former Harvard dean who's now president of Cape Cod Community College, earned $30,000 as a rank-and-file senator and an additional $7500 as a committee chairman. He figures he spent more money than he took in during six of his eight years on Beacon Hill. Add to that the increasing public hostility, he says, and it's no wonder fewer people are running for the legislature.

"There's just a whole different attitude," he says. "Ten years ago there was still some respect shown, at least in public. Now the reaction is often disgust. And that's tough to take." Although Kraus thinks the media are partly to blame, he believes the talk shows reflect rather than shape public attitudes, which he says have taken a sharp turn toward the negative because of rising economic insecurity.

"I think talk radio and a lot of the attitudes in the media are part of a broader attitude, which is to trash people in a public position simply because they're in a public position," Kraus says. "This gives us a kind of relief."

The real problem, then, isn't that legislators make too much money. It's that there are a number of contradictions that leave both legislators and the public frustrated and angry. Although legislators' official duties might appear to constitute a part-time job, local-government hearings, community meetings, constituent services, and the like add up to full-time work. Yet whenever legislators attempt to pay themselves a salary appropriate for full-time professionals, public outrage virtually demands that they give it back. Meanwhile, the trappings that once made the job enticing -- respect and prestige -- have all but faded away.

Pay-cut leader Barbara Anderson's solution has the virtue of being straightforward: the ballot measure would mandate an explicitly part-time legislature, with six-month sessions and $23,000 salaries. She notes that large industrial states such as Texas and North Carolina (which pay their legislators $7200 and $13,000, respectively) are somehow able to survive. And she's surely correct when she points out that right now we have "the worst of all worlds": the legislature is scheduled to adjourn on July 31 until Election Day, allowing incumbents to campaign full-time while pulling down their $46,000 salaries. That's wrong.

But Anderson's proposal isn't the solution. Politics in Massachusetts has always been a spectator sport, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Dick Kraus thinks people like the idea of part-time legislators in the abstract -- as long as those part-timers continue to attend their social functions and their community meetings. Besides, it's one thing to pay legislators $100 for a few weeks' work each year, as New Hampshire does. But how would Anderson's proposed six-month session bring us any closer to a part-time legislature? Who can take half the year off from a private-sector job?

Paul Fitzgerald, executive director of Common Cause of Massachusetts, has a better idea: public financing and spending caps, which would create "a level playing field" for incumbents and challengers. Currently, he notes, winning House candidates spend nearly $30,000 and winning Senate candidates spend nearly $100,000 on their campaigns. Incumbents outspend challengers by more than two to one.

But even that doesn't go to the heart of the matter -- the denigration of political life, for which the media must take a large share of the blame. We don't need a spate of happy-talk pols-done-good stories. And we certainly don't need to turn away from tough investigative reporting about pols gone bad. What we do need is a return to civility in public discourse, an understanding that a person can be wrong without being evil, and that simple disagreement is not license to make fun of someone's height, weight, or sexual orientation.

And we need to think before speaking (or writing).

Jack Levin, whose academic specialty is serial killers and mass murderers, recently gave an interview to USA Today in which he explained why some technophobes find the Unabomber appealing. The headline got garbled, Levin says, so it appeared that he found the Unabomber appealing.

Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves and denounced Levin as "a liberal elitist wacko." Protesters called Northeastern and tried to get Levin fired. Finally, Levin wrote a letter to USA Today to clarify his stand, and Limbaugh apologized.

"Maybe," Levin says, "more talk-show hosts should apologize."

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