The Boston Phoenix
February 5 - 12, 1998

[Talking Politics]

Picking battles

Paul Cellucci's wavering liberal principles, Jim Kelly's race initiative that isn't, and JP's special election

Talking Politics by Michael Crowley

Paul Cellucci's selection of former state senator Jane Swift as his running mate Monday was yet another appeal to the moderate, soccer-mom vote he'll need to win November's gubernatorial election. Young and relatively inexperienced, Swift was clearly chosen for the principal function of standing next to Cellucci and . . . being female.

This is nothing new from the acting governor. The budget proposal Cellucci released last week was a poll-tested spending spree with all the stuff that plays great in the voter-rich suburbs, such as $40 million for expanded daycare and another $40 million to hire new teachers.

Indeed Cellucci's political identity has long been rooted in his social liberalism -- his advocacy for the rights of women and gays in particular. It is Cellucci who is often said to have pulled Bill Weld leftward on social policy.

But hold on. Cellucci also faces a tough conservative challenge for the Republican nomination. And even as he plays Mr. Nice Guy, there have been a couple of subtle, less-noticed signs that Cellucci may be toning down his commitment -- long believed to be nonnegotiable -- to abortion rights and gay rights.

First, Cellucci revealed in early January that his pro-choice credentials have their limits, saying that he supports a ban on the procedure known to its opponents as "partial-birth" abortion. Cellucci says he would make an exception for a threat to the mother's life, but not for one to her health. This stance was certainly news to the state's pro-choice warriors, who consider the partial-birth abortion debate a guise for smothering abortion rights in general.

Last week, Cellucci again gave some old allies an unpleasant surprise by sidestepping an issue that tops the agenda of Massachusetts's gay-rights activists: health-insurance benefits for domestic partners. While the partial-birth abortion battle is a nasty and complex business, domestic partnership is a much easier call -- and Cellucci's position is far more difficult to understand.

Currently, the state will extend health-insurance benefits to an employee's spouse. But Massachusetts doesn't recognize same-sex marriage. So although they work just as hard as anyone else, gay and lesbian employees of the state can't obtain health benefits for their partners -- benefits that are worth thousands of dollars annually and that some of the state's largest employers, like BankBoston, already provide.

Last Thursday, the state senate passed a bill that would correct this injustice. For gay-rights activists, it was a hard-fought, uplifting victory. Winning the approval of the more conservative House would be a harder task, they figured, but at least an old comrade like Paul Cellucci would be on their side, right?

Not so fast. Not only has Cellucci shown no active support for the domestic-partners legislation, the early response from his office last week suggested that he might not even sign such a bill.

"I think we'd have to wait and see if it gets that far in the legislature," a Cellucci flack told the Boston Globe. "It could be very expensive." Given another opportunity to elaborate this week, the governor's office demurred: "We haven't looked at it, and we haven't analyzed it," says Cellucci spokesman Jose Juves.

That's not flat-out opposition. But it's hardly the kind of leadership that has rightly won Cellucci goodwill from liberals who disagree with him on issues like tax cuts and the death penalty.

"I'm very surprised that he's not coming out instinctively in support of this," says Sean Cahill, chair of the Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance of Massachusetts. "It was just sort of assumed that he would."

"It was surprising and disappointing," says Mark Merante, chairman of the gay and lesbian group Bay State Democrats. "And it does not help in terms of the work we have to do now in getting this through the House."

Cellucci appears to be using the bill's cost as grounds for concern. But that's a red herring; 1997 estimates by the state's Group Insurance Commission placed the tab at between $1 million and $3.3 million per year. Even Senate Ways and Means chairman Stanley Rosenberg's maximum estimate, of $14.4 million per year, amounts to less than one tenth of 1 percent of the state's $18 billion budget.

What all this seems to be about is election-year jockeying -- and, in particular, Cellucci's fear of state treasurer Joe Malone, his opponent for the GOP nomination. Malone's strategy has been to snipe at Cellucci from the right, painting him as un-Republican before the party's conservative-activist core. So far, it's been working. Given the weakness of the Democratic field, Malone may now be Cellucci's biggest obstacle to a November victory.

And so Cellucci throws bones to the conservatives on abortion and gay rights. But he'd better be careful. Not only does this tactic threaten to make bad policy, it's bad politics, too.

As Sean Cahill puts it: "Paul Cellucci is making a mistake if he thinks he can get elected without the gay and lesbian vote. I think he will do the right thing ultimately because he's a decent person, but I also think that it's politically in his best interest."

It's been a month since Boston City Council president James Kelly's call for a new "dialogue on race" within the city. And the early score is: Jimmy Kelly 1, racial healing 0.

In a January 5 speech after his reelection as council president, Kelly, a former leader of South Boston's angry anti-busing movement, invoked President Clinton's "national conversation on race" and proclaimed that he wanted the council "to embark on such a course" in 1998.

If Kelly does aspire to run for mayor or even Congress someday, as some suggest, he couldn't have paid the Boston Globe to put a better spin on his remarks. REELECTED COUNCIL CHIEF VOWS RACIAL HEALING IN CITY, cheered the Globe on January 6. KELLY OVERTURE STIRS HOPES, was the page-one story three days later. In between, there was a January 7 editorial, particularly promising for anyone possibly eyeing higher office: KELLY'S WIDENING SENSE OF CONSTITUENCY. All told, Kelly's slightly refashioned repetition of old parochial Southie mantras came across like I Have a Dream II.

What's amazing is that Kelly hasn't altered his basic philosophy at all. Nor does he even pretend to have done so. Kelly continues his long-time insistence that kids attend schools in their own neighborhoods, but offers no ideas for solving the disastrous inequity that once consigned black students to wretched schools and prompted busing in the first place. He still wants to change public-housing policy "so people can live in the neighborhood where they want to live." To him, the difference is that the city's blacks now agree with him. The trouble is, as even the Globe conceded: "They don't."

In other words, things haven't changed a bit -- except now Kelly is standing up and saying they have.

"In all frankness, I thought the reaction to that particular speech was as if people had heard a different speech than I heard," say City Councilor Thomas Keane. "Jimmy has many times before talked about those particular issues. It was not a racial-healing speech."

Even Kelly seemed caught off-guard by the Globe's love-in. When the Phoenix checked in with him this week, he admitted that the race initiative was on the back burner.

"I'm still playing catch-up, so it probably won't happen until spring at the earliest," said Kelly, citing plans for a new convention center and waterfront development in South Boston as his immediate priorities. "I think because it received some media attention, the issue was getting a little bit ahead of where I am, and exactly how I'm going to propose my ideas."

Kelly's only had a month to get the '98 city council organized, so it's too early to say gotcha! on his inaction. But harder to figure is the way Kelly not only failed to calm a burst of racial tension just days after his speech -- but intensified it. When three white teenagers charged with hate crimes got their families evicted from a South Boston housing project last month, the city's newest racial healer cranked up the incendiary rhetoric. "An act of viciousness, an act of hatred," Kelly fumed to the Boston Herald.

Presumably Kelly agrees that the attack, in which the white teens allegedly kicked and punched a young Hispanic mother, was also an act of viciousness and hatred. Why he wouldn't make more of an effort to say so is puzzling.

This sort of selective outrage is great for whipping up emotions in Kelly's Southie district. But when asked to respond to the idea that there might be some conflict between his pitched rhetoric on the evictions and his call for a racial dialogue, Kelly bristles. "I'll talk to you later," he says. And forebodingly, perhaps, he brings the conversation to an abrupt end.

JP's choices

The polls open in Jamaica Plain on February 10 for a special primary election to choose the Democratic candidate for the 11th Suffolk State Representative seat. State Representative John McDonough (D-Boston) retired from the legislature last November for a job at Brandeis University. Three Democrats are running, and next Tuesday's winner will face off against two independent candidates, Arthur Craffey and Tomas Gonzales, in a March 10 general election. Here's a quick rundown of who the candidates are, and where they stand.

MICHAEL LADOUCEUR LIZ MALIA WAYNE WILSON
39; executive director, Egleston Square Main Street; former State House aide; former director, Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless.

 48; spent eight-and-a-half years as McDonough's legislative aide; founding member, Gay and Lesbian Democrats; former health-care worker. 33; temporary collections agent, Dimock Community Health Center; at-large director and cofounder, Massachusetts Young Democrats; member, Ward 19 Democratic Committee.
DEATH PENALTY
Opposed. "I feel that people who can afford high-priced representation are the ones that don't find themselves on death row." "I oppose it on public policy grounds. It's ineffective. I think it's inhumane. . . . What I want to talk about is spending a lot more of our state resources on preventing crime." Opposed. "Killing someone in lieu of someone else's life makes us no better than the person who committed the crime in the first place."
CHARTER SCHOOLS
"I'm a proponent of pilot schools," public schools where many of the usual regulations are waived. "My fear is that resources will be diverted to the charters and away from the public schools." "I don't think they're a solution, I think they should be part of the solution. I don't endorse expanding them until we've gotten the feedback. . . . I absolutely don't think it should be a for-profit situation." "Kind of opposed. . . . Let's see what happens with what we have and give the experiment time to see if it's viable. And if it's not, pilot schools are a lot more conducive to bringing about constructive education."
TAX CUTS
"I would favor an income tax rollback," although not all the way to 5 percent, as some candidates have proposed. "People were there for state government when the state asked for a tax increase, and I think we owe the taxpayer some kind of break." "Absolutely not. There's a crisis in affordable housing, major needs in terms of addressing health-care expansion. We have a major opportunity for public intervention in terms of youth crime and youth services. We should be rebuilding the human services infrastructure that we tore apart." "I'd only be in favor of targeted tax cuts that would create jobs or help those people who are presently working in contingent employment or part time employment. Because I'm a temp, I know by firsthand experience. I haven't had health insurance for almost a year and a half."
KEY ISSUES
In the district there's a real need for affordable housing. We need to help first-time homebuyers purchase homes. There's also an awful lot of abandoned buildings in the district. I'd like to look at state resources . . . to renovate and rehabilitate them."

"In the district and statewide, there's a good economy . . . but you also see people who don't have good, high-paying jobs. I would propose a neighborhood economic development program."

Also: full funding of the state's 1993 education-reform act, protection and maintenance of parks and open spaces, efforts to ensure access to health care for children, and "greater development of community policing."

"Housing, on all three levels. But on the state level, [we] have not really made housing a priority issue at all in the last eight to ten years. The impact on the city and the district is pretty clear. We're seeing an intense escalation in rents and property values that's pushing people out."

"Public safety is a major issue in the district. I want to see community policing expanded."

"I want to work on developing comprehensive wraparound after-school youth programs . . . to reach the kids who are going to be part of the population bubble" that some experts predict will produce a new wave of youth violence. "We know how to prevent that, and we should be about that business right now."

"Raising the minimum wage would affect a good number of people in my district. You've got to give people a way to make a living, instead of just exist."

Also, "the tax base in the city. There's a good amount of exempt property. We've got to find other ways to get revenue."

On the state level, Wilson wants "incentives for employers to create jobs here instead of bringing them elsewhere. It's a matter of sustainability where we can have employers prefer to come to Massachusetts. . . . We're losing our manufacturing base."

WHY YOU?
"I honestly think I'm the most qualified candidate and have the most to offer. I have 10 years of State House experience and don't need on-the-job training. And I've lived the life that I advocate for. I lost a job, I didn't have health-care benefits, I know what it means for people not to have health care." "Experience is important. I have the experience, and I've been doing the work in the community. What's important is to be a conduit between the state government and the voters, and I just don't think the other two folks have the background at all." "I understand the district. My family has had a vested interest in the neighborhood for 60 years. My mother grew up in Jamaica Plain. I'm the only Democratic candidate to have attended Boston public schools. I have been trying to get things done for the people in my neighborhood. . . . It's kind of a higher calling."

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.