So don’t count out Jane Swift just yet. With Governor Paul Cellucci ready to take the first dogsled north, Swift, known mainly for a taxpayer-funded helicopter ride and for dumping her baby on her resentful staff, has a chance to undergo the sort of image transformation that could put her once-promising career back on track. As lieutenant governor, Swift has been viewed mainly as an arrogant yuppie with an overweening sense of entitlement. As acting governor, she needs to change the story line — to, say, hard-working career mom with twins on the way.

Can she do it? It’s not going to be easy, given the events of the past year, when Swift’s behavior seemed crass even by the low standards of Massachusetts politics. There was the aides-as-baby-sitters story, which ultimately earned her a $1250 fine from the State Ethics Commission. There was the helicopter ride home for Thanksgiving. There were the lucrative teaching gig at Suffolk and the subsidized apartment in Charlestown, both of which she gave up with obvious reluctance, and her sneering non-apology apology. By the end of 2000, polls showed her with an astoundingly bad favorable/unfavorable percentage rating of 17/59, even as her less-than-dynamic boss, Cellucci, scarred by the Big Dig overrun and a growing scandal over his relationship with the Teamsters, was hanging in with a 50/39.

But Swift has a window. “It could be five minutes, it could be five weeks, it could be five months where people will say, ‘Let’s give her another chance,’” says WLVI-TV (Channel 56) political reporter Jon Keller, who recently wrote a harsh profile of Swift for Boston magazine.

There are signs that whatever honeymoon Swift is likely to receive is already under way. The Boston Globe has been bending so far backwards that its institutional tongue is practically licking its heels. Exhibit A: a puffy February 8 feature by Tina Cassidy on a series of breakfast meetings Swift has been having with the female power elite. (“I was impressed,” Thalia Schlesinger said of Swift. “She was very articulate.”) Exhibit B: an even puffier front-page piece last Sunday in which Joanna Weiss traveled to Swift’s home town of North Adams for the purpose of collecting local-girl-makes-good quotes. (“She had to fight hard to get where she is now,” one resident told Weiss. “You have to be that type of person. You have to be driven.”) Even the Boston Herald offered a kinder twist on such past front-page headlines as jane err and jane air by running jane heir next to a flattering photo of Swift in its Saturday edition — although the photo it ran of an eye-rolling Swift on Wednesday was pretty brutal.

No story would be complete without a bit of media intrigue, and the Cellucci-Swift transition is no exception. Following weeks of speculation that Cellucci’s friend George W. Bush might name him secretary of transportation or ambassador to Italy, the Herald’s “Inside Track” reported on January 11 that the “rumor du jour” was that the governor’s real destination might be Canada. As the Globe maintained silence, the Herald’s Washington bureau chief, Andrew Miga, followed up with a January 26 piece on Cellucci’s Canadian prospects, and political editor Joe Sciacca began his January 29 column with: “A question for George W. Bush: What have the Canadians done to deserve this?”

The Globe finally struck back on February 9, in the form of a front-page article by State House bureau chief Frank Phillips and Washington staffer Glen Johnson reporting that Cellucci’s appointment “will be announced within weeks.” That, in turn, led to some off-the-record grumbling in the media-political community that the Globe had been tipped off as a reward for the previous day’s Tina Cassidy piece, for a squishy Phillips article on Cellucci political adviser Rob Gray’s decision not to go to Washington that also ran on February 8, or both. Responds Phillips: not true.

Soon, though, Cellucci will be yesterday’s news, and Acting Governor Swift will grab the reins of power — or at least the sides of the gubernatorial podium. With that in mind, the Phoenix this week asked a range of media and political observers whether the media have covered Swift fairly up until now — and what she should do to change the story and give herself the fresh start she so obviously needs.

TO A large extent, Swift’s problems have stemmed from her status as lieutenant governor, a job more useless than even that of vice-president. “It’s a shit job. There shouldn’t be such a thing as the lieutenant governor,” says WBZ Radio (AM 1030) talk-show host David Brudnoy, who’s had Swift on his program several times. “It’s a difficult job to do with distinction, so it’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” With a real job, Swift will automatically get a chance to make her case, an opportunity she never received when her sole official duty was to preside over the archaic Governor’s Council. Brudnoy’s suggestion: break dramatically with Cellucci by taking on the Teamsters, whose stranglehold on the local film industry has prompted a government investigation.

Emily Rooney, the host of Greater Boston, on WGBH-TV (Channel 2), agrees that the best antidote to Swift’s media woes is to leave the lieutenant governor’s job behind. “I saw a remarkable turnaround just in the past two days. There’s nothing like holding the position in order to command the respect,” says Rooney, who thinks Swift’s past media troubles were compounded by a newspaper war between the Globe and the Herald and by a dollop of sexism as well. Rooney’s advice to Swift: “Accessibility is the key. The way that you do that is, frankly, through the press. People will get used to her. I think she might be even more comfortable at a press conference than Cellucci.”

Democratic political consultant Mary Anne Marsh, a commentator on New England Cable News, is also critical of the media, saying women politicians in general are held to a higher standard than men. Marsh, though, believes Swift blew an opportunity to rehabilitate herself last year by not stepping forward to solve the state’s dearth of affordable child care — which would have addressed her own problem and everyone’s problem at the same time. But it’s not too late, in Marsh’s view: “I think if she did that, people across the board, regardless of political affiliation, would be so goddamned grateful that they’d say, ‘You know what? I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt from here on out.’”

Count WRKO Radio (AM 680) talk-show host Peter Blute among the doubters. Blute, a former Republican congressman, lost his job as head of Massport several years ago when the Herald caught him hosting a publicly funded booze cruise, complete with a breast-baring twentysomething named Gidget Churchill. And Swift — who Blute thinks saw him as a potential rival — was among the loudest in calling for Blute’s head. Blute, not surprisingly, sees much of Swift’s bad press as a result of her own hypocrisy — of the media pouncing on an elected official who didn’t hesitate to go after a rival’s ethics. “I’m not a big fan,” Blute says. As for Swift’s future, Blute says he’d like to see Mitt Romney run against her in the Republican primary, and that he considers her too “liberal” and too “wonkish” to unite the fractious Republican Party. (Blute also doesn’t rule out running himself, though he says, “I like what I’m doing now.”)

Still, Blute thinks there’s at least a possibility that Swift can thrive. “I think she’s got to pick a few issues and pound them home. Obviously the Democrats are going to be tougher with her than they were with Weld and Cellucci,” he says. “The executive has an advantage over the legislature because the executive speaks with one voice, and can position the legislature. There’s a big split between [House Speaker Tom] Finneran and [Senate president Tom] Birmingham; she can exploit that. Ultimately the issues do matter. The public does care about education, transportation. Although it doesn’t seem like that when the media is covering helicopter rides and boat trips and things like that.”

Elizabeth Sherman, a senior fellow at the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, part of UMass Boston’s McCormack Institute, says she was struck last year by how negatively Swift’s baby-sitting woes were viewed by women reporters. These reporters, Sherman says, resented Swift’s air of entitlement in grabbing the perks of political office to solve her child-care needs — perks of the sort the reporters themselves would have loved to have available to them.

“The truth of the matter is those rough, tough, fierce hard edges in women politicians don’t go over well,” says Sherman. “We’ve seen it on the Democratic side with Hillary Clinton, and we’ve seen it with Jane Swift. And the irony is that for women to make it in politics, you’ve got to be tough. You can’t be thin-skinned and get as high as she is in politics. And yet there is a downside to that. You’re very tough, and very often that persona is reflected in the media. And people misinterpret toughness for arrogance. I think Jane Swift has scored best with the public when she’s showed her sense of humor. When she dressed up as Monica Lewinsky, that was hilarious. When she went on the Howie Carr show. She’s just got to do more of that. That’s her strong suit, and I think that can be her salvation.”

Channel 56’s Jon Keller is among those who think Swift’s deserved everything that’s been thrown at her, and then some. “She made every obnoxious, arrogant mistake there was,” Keller says. “Her approval rating is right down there with dog doo on the carpet. Since then we have been treated to a year of sullen, pouty behavior, of cold-eyed, curt sound bites even when you’re just asking about an issue, and incredibly bogus attempts to, quote-unquote, rehabilitate her image.” Examples: her inconclusive stints as the Ms. Fix-It of transportation, as the point person for reforming the troubled Department of Social Services, and as the “education czarina.”

Keller, though, observes that as acting governor, Swift will have a secret weapon: the unpopularity of Finneran and Birmingham. “She’s got a chance to position herself as someone a little different and a little more palatable than these two insiders and their cronies,” Keller says, citing education, the budget, political reform, and Clean Elections as areas where she can take populist, outsider positions. “Does she want to make nice with the big boys or does she want to smack them around a little bit?” he asks. “It’s up to her.”

Two long-time sparring partners, Democratic consultant (and WRKO talk-radio host) Michael Goldman and Republican consultant Charley Manning, take opposite positions on what Swift can do as acting governor. Goldman, who actually thinks the media have been, on balance, easy on Swift (he thinks she’s never been held accountable for her lack of experience or her flip-flops on issues such as the death penalty and gun control, both of which she formerly opposed but now supports), says Swift will be irrelevant — just as Cellucci was — because the Republicans don’t have enough votes in the legislature to sustain her vetoes.

“The best thing she could do is to say, ‘I’m going to serve two years and finish out my term,’” Goldman says. But Manning — who, like Rooney, thinks Swift was the victim of overheated competition between the Herald and the Globe — says Swift can succeed by appealing to the public, not the legislature. “Cellucci was easily re-elected in a state where Republicans have only 13 percent of the vote,” Manning notes. “He was able to reach out to people.”

Susan Tracy, a former Democratic state representative and congressional candidate who’s now a business consultant, suggests that Swift break the third-termitis that seems to afflict the Weld-Cellucci-Swift State House by changing the players in policy areas such as health care and education. “She’s got to bring in some potentially new people in the government who are seen as real leaders in these fields,” Tracy says. “It will be interesting to see if she just leaves everything in place or makes changes.”

PERHAPS SWIFT’S most potent weapon is the media themselves. It is, after all, through the media that the public sees Swift. The public doesn’t know the real Jane Swift because the media don’t show her to them. They show, rather, a caricature.

Take, for instance, Ken Norris, the editor of the North Adams Transcript. Though he doesn’t particularly fault the media for their tough coverage, the Swift he sees in the Boston-centric press is quite different from the one people know in her home town, where she is lauded for her hard work as a state senator, for her tough 1996 campaign against Democratic congressman John Olver, and for her ability to work with Democrats such as North Adams mayor John Barrett. “It’s easier to look at her recent mistakes than to look at her record,” Norris says of the Boston press.

Bob Keough, the editor of CommonWealth magazine, spent quite a bit of time with both Cellucci and Swift in preparation for his cover story in the current issue. “I wouldn’t say the press has been unfair to Jane Swift over the past two years, but they focus on the high-profile snafus to the exclusion of everything else,” Keough says. “I think she’s smarter than the media give her credit for and she’s more polished than the media give her credit for. When you sit down with her she can tell a pretty good story about the administration and her accomplishments. I don’t think we’ve seen any of that in the media.”

To be sure, even if you cast aside the caricatures, the real Jane Swift is still an extraordinarily fortunate young woman who is about to become the state’s first female chief executive more through sheer dumb luck than through any real accomplishments of her own. Yet even critics such as Jon Keller concede that she’s intelligent, hard-working, and detail-oriented.

If Swift can use the governor’s office to show those qualities — and exploit the media goodwill that comes to any woman pregnant with twins — then she may very well succeed in reinventing herself as a potent political force.

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

Read past Phoenix coverage of Jane Swift:

http://12.11.184.13/archive/features/00/01/20/talking_politics.html