The Boston Phoenix October 12 - 19, 2000
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Howell's dilemma
The media won't cover her extensively because she's going to lose. And she's going to lose, in part, because the media won't cover her extensively.
by Dan Kennedy
You could probably count on one hand the number of registered voters in the room on this rainy morning. After all, the voting age in Massachusetts is 18, a milestone that's still in the future for most of the 190 students who attend the Stoneleigh Burnham School, an exclusive girls' boarding school in Greenfield.
But Carla Howell, the Libertarian Party's candidate for the US Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy, works the room as though it held the key to the election, mixing observations about how she got involved in politics with her decidedly provocative views on the issues.
On health care: "What the government is doing is breaking your legs, then handing you a crutch and saying, `See, we saved you.' "
On pot, cocaine, and other illegal drugs: "Repeal the war on drugs, which is causing horrific destruction in our country."
On guns: "A person who has the audacity to rape a woman, to murder another human being, or to molest a child is not going to care about gun-control laws."
Howell's positions may be decidedly non-mainstream. But in a year in which the Republican Party has found itself unable to put up a serious candidate to challenge Kennedy, her campaign is the only game in town.
The Republican candidate, Jack Robinson, was repudiated by Governor Paul Cellucci and the rest of the GOP establishment after they learned he'd been accused of misbehavior ranging from plagiarism to sticking an unwanted tongue in an ex-girlfriend's mouth. Robinson limps along: according to his most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), he's raised about $146,000 -- most of it from his own bank account -- and spent all but $7000.
By contrast, Howell reports having raised about $605,000 -- more than Republican Joe Malone put up against Kennedy in 1988 -- from some 4700 donors. (Granted, that's no match for Kennedy's war chest of $4.2 million in cash.) She's buying radio time to promote her "Small Government Is Beautiful" theme. She has well-known backers, such as Citizens for Limited Taxation executive director Barbara Anderson (who spoke at a major Howell rally in Burlington this past Tuesday), civil-liberties lawyer (and Phoenix contributor) Harvey Silverglate, and EMC Corporation founder Richard Egan. And she is the titular head of what is, under state law, a major party, by virtue of having won 5.3 percent of the vote in her 1998 campaign for state auditor, nearly double the three percent needed.
All of which presents the media -- not to mention Howell herself -- with a dilemma. On the one hand, Howell is a smart, articulate candidate with serious ideas, money, and a small -- but real -- base of support. On the other hand, she has no realistic chance of winning. By conventional standards, if there's no race, there's no news. And yet if the media choose to ignore Howell, then they are not only giving Kennedy a free ride; they are also passing up an opportunity to educate the public about libertarianism, a political philosophy with proven, if limited, appeal.
Which raises a couple of questions: what are elections for? And what should be the media's role in them? If you listen to, say, Boston University chancellor John Silber, who wrote an op-ed piece in the Globe recently, arguing that Kennedy has earned the right to run unopposed (see "This Just In," News and Features, September 22), then democracy is little more than a constitutionally mandated inconvenience. But if you listen to WBZ Radio (AM 1030) talk-show host David Brudnoy, a Libertarian and a Howell supporter, elections -- and political coverage -- should be about ideas, and not just about who has a realistic chance of winning. "The media owe her a kind of serious treatment, because she's the only one who has a shot at bringing new people in," Brudnoy says.
Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www.dankennedy.net
Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com
Articles from July 24, 1997 & before can be accessed here
