Fall from grace

Part 2

by Dan Kennedy

It's a breezy afternoon at Carson Beach, in South Boston. Metropolitan District Commissioner David Balfour and state Environmental Affairs secretary Trudy Coxe are on hand to announce improvements to the waterfront. The South Boston political establishment is here as well: Boston City Council president Jim Kelly, State Senator Stephen Lynch, and State Representative John Hart.

Cellucci, in his favored attire -- dark pinstripe suit and whiter-than-white shirt, his tie the only splash of color -- steps up to the podium a few minutes late, delayed by Greek Independence Day festivities at the State House followed by a quick lunch in his hideaway back office (prosciutto and lettuce on focaccia -- from which he picks off a layer of Brie -- washed down with Diet Coke).

"My singing debut at Senator Lynch's breakfast a few weeks ago did not win rave reviews, so maybe I can win some rave reviews today," he begins stolidly, referring to his less-than-stellar performance at the annual St. Patrick's Day breakfast in South Boston -- a forum where Weld has been effortlessly charming the locals for years.

In any partnership, certain stereotypes develop, and in Cellucci's case they all work to his disadvantage. Weld is the breezy, outgoing Yankee with a ready smile and a ruddy complexion; Cellucci is the reserved Italian-American with an awkward speaking style and a five o'clock shadow. Weld is Harvard; Cellucci is Boston College. Perhaps most damaging, Weld is seen as being above politics; Cellucci, who served 14 years in the legislature before running alongside Weld in 1990, is the inside player who runs the administration's patronage operation, and whose political appointments have occasionally led to embarrassment.

"It's a big government. We're not perfect. Sometimes things don't work out," Cellucci says in defense of his hiring practices. "We have an obligation to appoint people who are qualified, but I also think that we should be appointing people who agree with us. If people want to call that patronage, I suppose that's what they'll do."

But if the perceptions have favored Weld, the truth is considerably more complicated. Because, in fact, Cellucci is a sharp political player whose instincts and intricate knowledge of state government have had a lot to do with Weld's success. Cellucci is often underappreciated -- though certainly not by Weld, who has occasionally let it slip that he thinks Cellucci would make a better governor than he.

"It's not as if I'm a traditional lieutenant governor, who's stand-by equipment," Cellucci says. "We're a partnership, and I'm in the middle of everything. I participate in every single decision that this administration makes."

Thus it's a matter of not inconsiderable irony that Cellucci is regarded as electoral roadkill, whereas Weld -- affable and intelligent, but also undisciplined and often inattentive -- has maintained his reputation as a giant, as the only Republican who'd have even a remote possibility of defeating a Kennedy for the first time in Massachusetts history.

Get Cellucci away from the cameras, and he's more adroit than most people would think. Though stiff and formal in front of a crowd, his demeanor changes considerably when he's in a crowd. After the grip-and-grins in South Boston, Cellucci mixes easily with those on hand, introducing himself to a few semi-perplexed residents who are passing by, and spending a few moments with Lynch's elderly parents to heap praise upon their son. He can display a puckishly self-deprecating sense of humor as well. When an aide tells him that someone had remarked to her about Cellucci's striking resemblance to Robert De Niro, Cellucci, a film buff, instantly replies in his best Travis Bickle impersonation: "Are you talkin' to me?"

The loose and funny side of Cellucci is something that voters haven't seen much of in the past six years. Even a lieutenant governor who's "co-governor" isn't supposed to upstage the governor, and Cellucci has been careful to portray himself as the loyal underling. But State Senator Richard Tisei (R-Wakefield), chairman of the Weld-Cellucci campaign in 1990, recalls Cellucci as a formidable presence on the campaign trail that year. "He was a better candidate than Weld," Tisei says. "He was a great campaigner."

Indeed, it's no exaggeration to say that Weld couldn't have been elected without Cellucci -- not just for strategic reasons, but for ideological ones as well.

Weld had launched his campaign for governor with great hopes. Highly regarded as a corruption-fighting US attorney, he later strengthened his reputation by resigning his post as associate attorney general to protest the actions of his ethically challenged boss, Attorney General Edwin Meese. Nevertheless, Weld found the early going tough. Meanwhile, Cellucci, with the support of Bush White House operatives Andrew Card and Ron Kaufman, was mulling over his own candidacy.

Late in the summer of 1989, Weld contacted Cellucci and made an unprecedented offer: join the campaign as Weld's running mate, even though such an arrangement was technically impossible (the state constitution provides for a party's candidates for governor and lieutenant governor to be elected separately). Cellucci agreed, which allowed the dwindling breed of progressive and moderate Republicans to present a united front against the likely nominee, then-House Minority Leader Steve Pierce.

Under Cellucci's tutelage, Weld took two huge steps toward viability. First, he unabashedly embraced abortion rights after previously flip-flopping, especially over the issue of whether poor women had a right to publicly funded abortions. Second -- and, arguably, even more important in cementing his image as a different kind of Republican -- Weld took Cellucci's advice and became an outspoken advocate of gay-and-lesbian rights. In turn, Cellucci, a longtime opponent of the death penalty who'd switched his position while working on George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign (moved, he says, by the pleas of police groups), adopted Weld's law-and-order agenda.

The ticket was nearly destroyed at the 1990 Republican convention. The overwhelmingly anti-choice delegates booed Weld and endorsed Pierce. Weld suggested to Cellucci that he not mention him in his speech, but Cellucci ignored that advice and was subjected to his own round of catcalls -- and defeat at the hands of then-State Representative Peter Torkildsen, a once and future pro-choice moderate who was running that year as an anti-choice conservative.

Despite the convention defeat, Cellucci quickly recovered his political standing and outpaced Torkildsen in polls throughout the summer. Weld, though, lagged badly behind Pierce. What saved Weld -- to the surprise of nearly every pundit -- was that independents, who traditionally vote in the Democratic primary, overwhelmingly decided to cast Republican ballots. Weld's seemingly contradictory blend of lifestyle liberalism and economic conservatism proved to be a remarkably good fit with the mood of an electorate that was both angry and weary after eight years of activist government under Michael Dukakis. Weld nearly lost that November to the conservative Democratic nominee, John Silber, but Silber's refusal to embrace tax cuts -- and his unprovoked televised verbal attack on Channel 5 anchor-icon Natalie Jacobson -- made Weld and Cellucci the victors on Election Day.

The trouble for Cellucci has been the aftermath of that victory. As with any running mate, his political task -- to unify what was left of the Republican Party's moderate wing -- was much more clearly defined than his governmental task. Cellucci may be an important part of the administration, but constitutionally his only roles are to preside over the archaic and nearly toothless Governor's Council, and wait for Weld to die or resign. It's a job virtually guaranteed to diminish the political prospects of anyone who holds it.

More . . .

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