Contenders

Barging ahead

Part 4

by Dan Kennedy

Indeed, it's Harshbarger's lack of support within the party, among other factors, that has many of the political wise guys and gals convinced he won't run against Kennedy. It's smart politics, they say, for Harshbarger to act as if he's ready to do battle with Kennedy at this point. If Kennedy decides not to run, Harshbarger will look like the only Democrat with the guts to have taken him on. And if Kennedy plunges ahead, Harshbarger can probably find a way to weasel out without inflicting too much political damage on himself.

Says a leading Democrat about the possibility of a Kennedy-Harshbarger primary: "I can see no scenario where that would happen." This source, who's probably closer to Harshbarger than to Kennedy, believes a high federal appointment is the most likely outcome of the early skirmishing that's going on right now. Noting that Harshbarger is president of the National Association of Attorneys General (and, before that, served as head of the National Association of District Attorneys), the source insists that "Scott is a much bigger deal outside Massachusetts than he is inside Massachusetts." Indeed, Harshbarger has served as an occasional White House adviser, and the professional, corruption-free manner in which he's run his own office would be a plus given the grueling confirmation process to which federal appointees are subjected. And as long as Harshbarger says he's running for governor, the Kennedys have an incentive to pressure President Clinton to remove Harshbarger from the scene.

If Harshbarger did challenge Kennedy, would he have a chance? Anything can happen in politics, but clearly Harshbarger faces some huge obstacles.

For one thing, what Democrat would want to be seen giving money to an opponent of the Kennedy family? Harshbarger is raising money now, and says he'll have $500,000 to $600,000 on hand by the end of the year, a good start on the $3.5 million to $4 million he expects he'll need to win the 1998 primary. But Kennedy, too, is already soliciting campaign contributions at a furious pace.

For another, Harshbarger needs to win 15 percent at the Democratic State Convention in June 1998 just for the right to appear on the September primary ballot. In 1990 the eventual primary winner, John Silber, had to cut a deal with then-Massachusetts Senate president Bill Bulger to reach that threshold. Whom will Harshbarger be able to approach for a similar deal with Ted and Joe Kennedy working the delegates? Harshbarger's one advantage is that as a pro-choice, anti-death-penalty reformist, he comes off as slightly more liberal than Kennedy, who, though pro-choice, is in favor of capital punishment and has cultivated an urban-populist style that's more Ray Flynn than Michael Dukakis. Those factors will probably be enough to get Harshbarger over the 15 percent barrier; the convention, after all, is a haven for liberal activists. But it won't be easy, and it's likely to leave him bruised.

And if Harshbarger survives the convention and is able to keep up with Kennedy in the spending game? Early polls, for what they're worth, have shown Kennedy ahead of Harshbarger by a two-to-one margin. But a September Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll suggests that Harshbarger may have the potential to catch up: his favorable/unfavorable ratio was 41 to 14 percent, and Kennedy's was 52 to 28 percent. At this early stage, low unfavorables can be a bigger asset than high favorables. High unfavorables, after all, show that people already know and don't like a candidate, and it's hard for a politician to do much about that.

The Harshbarger camp starts with the premise that though Kennedy probably has a lock on traditional Democrats, Kennedy's appeal to suburban independents -- always a strong voting bloc for Harshbarger -- is limited. (In the 1990 attorney-general primary, Harshbarger lost several large cities, including Worcester and Springfield, and nearly lost Boston, but he pasted Shannon in the suburbs and the outlying towns.) With an electorate that's 39 percent Democratic and nearly 48 percent "unenrolled," or independent, a large turnout of independents in the Democratic primary could make Harshbarger an upset winner.

Then there's the energy factor. Though the Kennedys are famous for their nonstop campaigning, they may meet their match in Harshbarger. "Scott plunges into those rooms with a passion. `Hi, I'm Scott Harshbarger. Hi, I'm Scott Harshbarger. Hi, I'm Scott Harshbarger,' " says former state representative Nick Paleologos, a film and theater producer. Though Paleologos finds Harshbarger's intensity a bit disconcerting (he calls him "an acquired taste"), he adds: "It's a quality that when you watch it in action, you say, `He was born to campaign.' "

But despite Harshbarger's relentlessness and potential appeal to independents, he must be considered a distant long shot.

"This is not going to be easy by any stretch," says Lou DiNatale, a political analyst at UMass/Boston's McCormack Institute of Public Affairs. "What is the case against Joe Kennedy in a Democratic primary? I just don't see how Harshbarger does it. But politicians are gamblers, and they believe in the long shot. Harshbarger's demonstrated a certain kind of Don Quixote quirkiness. He's not predictable, and he's not a traditional candidate."

Part 5

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