Third time's no charm

Peter Torkildsen's rematch with Representative John Tierney was supposed to put state Republicans back in business. So far, it's not working out that way.

Politics by Dan Kennedy

It's lunchtime at Brothers Deli in Beverly. Amid the grilled-chicken salads and the pita sandwiches, the lingering small talk and the hurry-up-let's-get-back-to-work gulps, Peter Torkildsen moves from table to table, handing out campaign literature and asking for votes.

The reception the former Republican congressman gets is polite, if not exactly enthusiastic. In this, his comeback bid, Torkildsen faces a steep uphill fight to dislodge Democratic incumbent John Tierney. Torkildsen beat Tierney in a close election in 1994; two years later, Tierney defeated Torkildsen by fewer than 400 votes. Now, shorn of the trappings of office, Torkildsen is finding it rough going.

Take, for instance, Geraldine Limon Polansky, a self-described "old lefty" from Beverly who's leaning toward Tierney, in part because she doesn't want to see Democrats damaged by the Lewinsky scandal. "He's a sleaze," she says of Bill Clinton. "I'd like to see the fool resign, to be honest with you. But I don't want to impeach him. I think impeachment is ridiculous."

Or take Virginia Preston, a Danvers resident who was a Torkildsen supporter until 1992, when he switched to a pro-choice stand. "I was very supportive of him until he changed his mind on the abortion issue," says Preston. "I've gotten so disillusioned by politics that I don't know who to vote for."

Torkildsen's dilemma -- too conservative, or at least too Republican, for a district that is strongly urban and Democratic, yet too liberal for the true believers on the right -- is something he acknowledges, even if he doesn't quite know what to do about it. "That's what happens when you're a moderate," he says matter-of-factly.

On the attack Former Republican congressman Peter Torkildsen likes to say that Representative John Tierney is "too liberal" for the Sixth District and "out of touch" with his constituents. When it comes to policy, though, Torkildsen often sounds like a Tierney clone, insisting that he, like his opponent, wants nothing more than to improve public education and protect the elderly. The distinctions are in the details. In attempting to make his case against Tierney, Torkildsen has stooped to levels of disingenuousness that are notably out of sync with his nice-guy image. Nowhere is that more true than in a campaign flier that starkly proclaims: TWO YEARS AGO JOHN TIERNEY PROMISED NOT TO CUT MEDICARE. HE THEN VOTED TO CUT $115 BILLION FROM MEDICARE. Torkildsen must assume that voters have awfully short memories. A refresher: in 1996, in one of the most disastrous moves of his Speakership, Newt Gingrich proposed to cut the growth of Medicare spending by some $270 billion -- a figure that dovetailed nicely, Democrats observed, with another Gingrich proposal, a $245 billion tax cut for upper-income households. Tierney endorsed an alternative promoted by the Clinton administration: a $100 billion cut that would stabilize Medicare for another decade. Thus, Torkildsen is patently incorrect when he claims that Tierney promised never to cut Medicare. And he compounds the error by failing to point out that he himself voted several times for the $270 billion cut. "This stuff is just a lie," fumes Michael Goldman, Tierney's political consultant. Responds Torkildsen campaign manager Gene Hartigan: "Tierney told people in this district on several occasions, 'I will not cut Medicare.' " Perhaps he did; but if so, it was merely shorthand for endorsing the Clinton plan and opposing Gingrich's draconian proposal. Torkildsen's disingenuousness extends to other issues as well. Tierney has been hailed as a leading voice for campaign-finance reform; yet Torkildsen ignores that and pounds away instead at Tierney's refusal to spurn political action committee (PAC) money, the principal means by which labor unions get involved in the political process. Torkildsen, not surprisingly, raises much of his money from corporate executives. And though both Tierney and Torkildsen have endorsed Question 2, which would guarantee public funding in state elections, Torkildsen insists that such funds come from voluntary check-offs on state income-tax forms, a system that brings in far less money than would be needed. Torkildsen also criticizes Tierney for voting against a Republican resolution to guarantee that 90 percent of federal education money is spent in the classroom. Tierney counters that some 95 percent of such money already goes to the classroom, and that the Republicans' real purpose was to roll education aid for specific programs such as Head Start into hard-to-account-for block grants. One real difference would appear to be in their approach to business. The US Chamber of Commerce gives Tierney just a 20 percent rating. And last Friday, the National Federation of Independent Business staged an event at Danvers's Putnam Pantry ice-cream and candy shop -- run by a descendant of General Israel Putnam, a Revolutionary War hero -- to endorse Torkildsen and to denounce Tierney as an enemy of small-business owners. Yet if voters knew what was behind those actions, they might side with Tierney. The Chamber's ratings are based in part on Tierney's support for a higher minimum wage and for tougher environmental standards. And the NFIB's low score for Tierney also derives from his refusal to embrace such flaky conservative causes as the abolition of the federal tax code and a constitutional amendment to make it harder to raise taxes. Indeed, the record shows that Tierney knows quite a bit more about the business community than Torkildsen: Tierney, a lawyer with a private practice for several decades, is a former president of the Salem Chamber of Commerce. Torkildsen has been on a government payroll for most of his adult life.

When 1998 began, the Sixth Congressional District looked like potentially fertile territory for the Republicans. Stretching from Boston's North Shore to the New Hampshire border, the district encompasses Democratic cities such as Salem, Peabody, Lynn, and Haverhill and tony Republican enclaves such as Hamilton, Wenham, and Topsfield. Torkildsen's two solid if unspectacular terms had established him as a proven vote-getter. Surely, the thinking went, with the scandal-plagued Clinton dragging down Tierney, Torkildsen could rebound from the Democratic gale that blew through Massachusetts in 1996 and reclaim his congressional seat. (See "On the Attack," right.)

So far, though, that's not how it's shaping up. With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, indications are that Tierney is on his way to a decisive victory. An internal Tierney poll shows him with a 19-point lead -- and Torkildsen's own camp counters, lamely, that Tierney's only leading by seven. Although in September Torkildsen actually raised more money than Tierney ($128,000 to $107,000), Tierney has $406,000 in cash on hand for the stretch run, compared to just $122,000 for Torkildsen. Perhaps most important, Peabody's mind-bogglingly popular mayor-for-life, Peter Torigian, has put his endorsement and campaign organization behind Tierney after staying neutral in the two previous races.

Last week the Washington-based Rothenberg Political Report downgraded Torkildsen's chances, changing its assessment of the district from "leaning Democrat" to "Democrat favored," the next best thing to being unopposed. (The competing Cook Political Report still calls the race a toss-up.) Other political observers think the real weak link in the state's all-Democratic congressional delegation is not Tierney but his fellow freshman, Worcester's Jim McGovern, once thought to be unbeatable. Though the extroverted McGovern has a higher public profile than Tierney, he's facing an aggressive, well-funded challenge from Matt Amorello, a Republican state senator from Grafton. "Matt Amorello is driving a tank right now," says Republican political consultant Kevin Sowyrda. "Peter Torkildsen is driving a jeep low on gas."

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Peter Torkildsen built his career by being in the right place at the right time. A Danvers resident, he won a state representative's seat in 1986 by beating Peabody's Jack Murphy, then majority leader of the Massachusetts House, just as the populist backlash against the state's Democratic establishment was beginning to build. After losing the lieutenant governor's race to Paul Cellucci in 1990, he ran for Congress in 1992 -- and had the good fortune to face Democratic incumbent Nick Mavroules, who was under federal indictment on corruption charges; Mavroules later did a stretch in the can.

But Torkildsen's luck ran out with the so-called Republican revolution of 1994. Newt Gingrich's rise to the Speakership may have been good for Republicans nationally, but it was murder on Torkildsen, a one-time ally of the religious right who later adopted moderate positions on gay rights and abortion. Torkildsen found himself whipsawed between his liberal district and the right-wing Republican majority to which he belonged; and he straddled, with disastrous effects, on hot-button issues such as gun control and Medicare cuts. The result was that in 1996, Tierney -- a sharp-elbowed Salem lawyer with a daunting command of policy arcana -- squeaked by Torkildsen in his second attempt.

Now Tierney, a staunch progressive who is strongly supported by labor, consumer, and environmental groups, is taking advantage of his incumbency in ways Torkildsen, as a Republican outsider, never could. Add to that national poll results showing the Clinton scandal may actually hurt Republicans who try to make an issue of it (Torkildsen calls vaguely for the impeachment process to move forward, whereas Tierney favors censure or something like it), and Tierney would appear to be in a commanding position. It doesn't help that Randal Fritz, a right-wing Christian candidate whose 2500 votes may have cost Torkildsen the election two years ago, is back, denouncing the Republican as "unbelievably liberal and socialist." And this time, Fritz is buying radio ads.

Indeed, a whiff of desperation has enveloped Torkildsen. He's been running seemingly since the moment he lost two years ago, and his penchant for referring to himself as "Congressman Torkildsen" has been criticized as deliberately misleading by the local media and by his unsuccessful Republican-primary opponent, Paul McCarthy. Torkildsen's habit of showing up at events and sneaking into grip-and-grin photos has been mocked by the Haverhill Gazette. The "consulting business" he set up earned him a whopping $13,000, which drew snickers from the Boston Herald. All too often, Torkildsen comes across as someone who's running because he simply can't think of anything else to do.

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Even if Torkildsen's campaign were firing on all cylinders, he'd still be a long shot. Tierney has moved quickly to establish himself as the district's most formidable congressman since Michael Harrington, a stalwart of the antiwar movement who served from the late 1960s through the mid-'70s. Harrington, now a Salem lawyer, calls Tierney an "aggressive guy with a good mind" who has the potential to become a national leader on issues such as reforming the excesses of the global economy.

Tierney is not warm and fuzzy. He treats speeches as opportunities to bark policy points as rapidly as machine-gun fire, and he rarely misses a chance to blast Republicans in divisive, partisan terms. At a candidates' forum at Salem Hospital last week sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons, for instance, Tierney angrily charged that Congress was still in session "because the Republicans are refusing to re-fund the International Monetary Fund." And, noting that he had arrived after Torkildsen had left, Tierney began his criticism of a Torkildsen-backed tax-cut proposal with a snide "I don't know which story he told you today." Tough on his staff and wary of reporters, he lacks the goofy charm of an Ed Markey, the sharp humor of a Barney Frank, or the easy camaraderie of a Marty Meehan or a Bill Delahunt. Tierney does, though, project intelligence, diligence, and competence, qualities that have attracted notice within the district.

Though lofty ideological causes are nice, nothing gets the attention of the folks back home like pork, and Tierney has served it up well-roasted, with an apple in its mouth. His crowning achievement: a $50 million authorization to extend the MBTA's Blue Line from Revere into Lynn, Swampscott, Salem, and Beverly, supplementing the existing commuter rail. Torkildsen, who opposes the Beverly stop, has tried to argue that a budget authorization is meaningless, since the actual funds have to be appropriated separately. But Congress has already coughed up $1 million for a preliminary study. And Tierney's accomplishment so impressed Allan Kort, the conservative managing editor of Lynn's Daily Evening Item, that he wrote that Tierney has "hit the ground running like no congressman I have seen in my four decades behind the typewriter/computer keys."

Torkildsen has criticized Tierney for not seeking a seat on the House Armed Services Committee, the better to protect jobs at the General Electric plant in Lynn. Yet just last month Congress approved a major defense bill that will keep GE churning out jet engines. At Peabody's Brooksby Farm last Sunday, GE worker Laurinda Clark -- standing with her kids in the pony-ride line while Tierney and Peter Torigian made the rounds -- said she would support Tierney precisely because of his success at bringing defense money back to the district. "He's really done very well for us there as far as military engines go," she said. "We've got to save all the jobs that we can."

Though Torkildsen's moderate persona and ideology blur the differences between him and Tierney, there are a few crucial distinctions. Most obviously, Torkildsen favors the death penalty and Tierney is opposed. But even on abortion and gay rights, the issues on which Torkildsen has moved toward the mainstream, significant differences remain. For instance, Torkildsen believes states should have the right to choose whether to pay for abortions for poor women and whether to grant domestic-partnership benefits to lesbians and gay men. Tierney, by contrast, supports using the power of the federal government to ensure that equal treatment under the law is something more than a local option.

On other issues, it's difficult to draw clear distinctions. Torkildsen, like Tierney, names education, jobs, health care, and campaign-finance reform as his main issues. In terms of energy and audacity, though, the edge has to go to Tierney, who has consistently aligned himself with the most progressive elements of the Democratic Party, favoring such reforms as a universal health-care program at a time when most politicians dare not even mouth the phrase. Last September, Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, called Tierney "one of the 105th's most visible freshmen." Tierney, in other words, is a liberal activist in the Massachusetts tradition; Torkildsen, a moderate seeking to serve both a liberal constituency and a conservative party hierarchy, is forever tacking back and forth. (Just this week, Torkildsen and Matt Amorello pledged not to support Gingrich for another term as Speaker, even though Torkildsen last week declined an opportunity to criticize Gingrich for anything worse than rhetorical excess.)

Awkward though Tierney can be at the public rituals of political life, there are signs that he's getting better. At Brooksby Farm last Sunday, he amiably made the rounds with Torigian, even joining him for a friendly game of horseshoes. Torigian's message to his supporters: Tierney has delivered for the district.

During an interview in the back room of a storage shed, surrounded by prize-winning pies, Tierney aggressively defended his record. "I have focused on the issues that are important to the district," he says, citing his work on literacy programs, small-business loans, and constituent services. "If you had four years and couldn't do it, too bad," he snarls, responding to Torkildsen's criticism of his record. "Get out of the way and let someone else do it."

It's bingo time at the Beverly Council on Aging. Torkildsen, with an awkward relentlessness bordering on the dorky, makes his way from table to table, handing out plastic magnifying-glass rulers with his name on them and asking for votes. "Let me talk to the mayor and see what can be done," he tells a woman who's having a problem with the elevator in her building. When she protests that he must have more important things to do, he responds, "If someone's running for public office, it's part of the job."

For months now, Torkildsen's been hitting spots such as these -- bingo games, train stations, and business gatherings -- campaigning below radar, hoping to sneak up on his more visible, better funded opponent. "When you're the challenger you can do these seven days a week," he notes, smiling. He is fond of pointing out that he lost by just one vote per precinct two years ago.

But things have gotten harder, not easier, for Peter Torkildsen. "It's like the voters up there got to test-drive both of them, and they're sticking with this model," says Democratic political consultant Mary Anne Marsh, who predicts an easy Tierney victory.

Like a movie that gets more predictable and less interesting with each succeeding sequel, Tierney-Torkildsen III holds little promise of fresh plot twists or a surprise ending. The outcome seems likely to ensure that there won't be a Tierney-Torkildsen IV.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.