Fall from grace

Part 3

by Dan Kennedy

The PR highlight of Paul Cellucci's tenure as lieutenant governor may have come on May 30, 1995.

A freak tornado had devastated Great Barrington the night before. Weld skipped town anyway, flying to Sacramento to help with a fundraiser for Governor Pete Wilson of California, who was then gearing up for his eminently forgettable presidential campaign. Cellucci, left in charge, took a National Guard helicopter to Western Massachusetts and very visibly met with local officials and residents.

As it turned out, Cellucci's star turn did Weld more harm than good. Weld came under withering criticism for his inattention, with the Boston Herald running a big WHERE'S WELDO? headline on page one, and calling his absence "shameful" in an editorial. Cellucci soon returned to the shadows.

No politician can get ahead without a well-honed instinct for self-aggrandizement. Yet it's dangerous for a lieutenant governor (or a vice-president) to grab the limelight, since an unseemly lurch onto the public stage can undermine the guy in charge and call into question the understudy's loyalty. This political imperative to remain in the background works doubly against Cellucci because of his lack of charisma.

Thus, though Cellucci may well be the most influential lieutenant governor of modern times, his role has been mainly behind the scenes. For instance, Cellucci says it was he -- at a time when other Republicans were demanding confrontation -- who urged the inexperienced Weld to work with the legislature's Democratic leadership in 1991 to solve the fiscal crisis then threatening the state.

"I have a demonstrated record of working with people in both parties to get things done," Cellucci argues. The public, though, saw not Cellucci but Weld, then-Senate president Bill Bulger, and then-House Speaker Charlie Flaherty, each one striking a statesmanlike pose.

As with the resolution of the fiscal crisis and the subsequent slowdown of the growth in state spending, it's difficult for the public to ascribe the accomplishments of the Weld-Cellucci Administration to Cellucci. Cellucci himself declines to define the division of duties, explaining, "We decided early on that we weren't going to do that. We felt we should both have overall responsibility and consult on everything." That makes it difficult for Cellucci to take much credit for the Weld tax cuts, for a massive increase in spending for public education, or for so-called welfare reform -- a state initiative even more draconian than the federal government's, but one that's apparently popular with a majority of the public.

There are a few accomplishments Cellucci can point to as his own. He chairs the Massachusetts Jobs Council. He traveled the state putting together a sweeping proposal to downsize state government, an effort that met with limited success in the legislature. Management of the $10 billion Central Artery/Tunnel Project seems to have improved since Cellucci brought together the heads of the various state agencies overseeing the work and demanded that they end their turf battles. (Though the project, only now entering its peak construction years, remains a fiasco waiting to happen. Asked about a much-anticipated -- and much-delayed -- 60 Minutes report, Cellucci replies dryly, "They never interviewed me. Little do they know.")

The area in which Cellucci takes the most justifiable pride is his chairmanship of the Governor's Commission on Domestic Violence -- a commission that was created after Cellucci and women legislators met following several horrific murders of women at the hands of their abusive male partners.

Cellucci approaches semi-eloquence when discussing the subject. "This is really how men treat women, this whole controlling behavior," he says. "We have to change attitudes that a lot of men in society have. And changing attitudes, unfortunately, takes time." Among the commission's accomplishments are increased funding for shelters and hotlines, a computerized domestic-violence registry, and mandatory training for judges. So caught up in the issue is Cellucci that he recently read Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson's Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Houghton Mifflin, 1996), and he eagerly talks about a section of the book dealing with pygmy chimps, which live in matriarchal societies in which violence is almost unheard-of.

Yet there are ideological limits to Cellucci's commitment to combating domestic violence. Leslie Starsoneck, director of public policy for the Massachusetts Coalition of Battered Women Service Groups and a member of the commission, praises Cellucci, saying, "He actually comes and chairs every meeting." But when pressed about the administration's overarching emphasis on slashing public assistance, an effort that disproportionately affects women, Starsoneck acknowledges that Weld and Cellucci's goals are contradictory "to the extent that you consider poverty to be violence against women."

Then, too, human services in general could prove to be an area of huge vulnerability for Cellucci. For the very reasons that Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation president Michael Widmer gives the administration and the legislature "high marks in terms of the restoration of fiscal stability," the Massachusetts Human Services Coalition carps that Weld and Cellucci's budget priorities, though "moving in a positive direction," nevertheless continue to do "too little for the swollen rolls of Massachusetts people who genuinely need help, at a time when the money is available."

The Department of Social Services is in perpetual chaos (as it has been for well over a decade), with the heart-rending stories of children abused by both their caretakers and the system regularly making headlines. The head of the Department of Mental Retardation recently resigned after it was revealed that the agency failed to intervene on behalf of two men who were horrendously mistreated at a house in Raynham.

Cellucci's response: "The miracle is that we don't have more tragedies. I just don't agree that DSS is in disarray. I think they've made some substantial improvements." Sadly, Cellucci may well be right, and government can hardly be expected to keep ahead of the virulent spread of social dysfunction that has marked the past 20 years. Still, the situation could arguably be better with more money -- and Cellucci, without Weld's above-it-all persona, would likely take the heat in a political campaign.

Indeed, there's a reason that lieutenant governors rarely get elected to the top job, just as there's a reason that George Bush was the only vice-president since Martin Van Buren to be elected president: a sharp challenger can, with relative ease, cast a number-two as insignificant and simultaneously culpable for the shortcomings of his predecessor.

More . . .

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