Race For the 8th

The Boston Phoenix
May 28 - June 4, 1998

[Race for the 8th]

That's entertainment!

Marjorie Clapprood's politics of personality

by Michael Crowley
Now this is a sight to behold. The scene is a leafy back yard in a peaceful Cambridge neighborhood on a recent breezy spring night. A few dozen well-dressed Brattle Street liberals are milling around an elegant garden pool, sipping white wine and sampling hors d'oeuvres at a fundraiser for a local state representative.
And here is Marjorie Clapprood, who has stopped by on a night of campaigning for the congressional seat soon to be vacated by Representative Joe Kennedy. Here are her blazingly blond hair, her mile-high heels, her famously manic, anything-goes attitude -- approximately six nitro-charged feet of her towering above . . . former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

Ray Flynn

Robert Reich! The grand swami of concerned, erudite liberals everywhere; a four-foot-eleven-inch embodiment of substance over style; economist, author, all-purpose important thinker.
Margie is moving in for a handshake, and certain disaster seems at hand: can Clapprood's schmoozing possibly work on a Harvard-Oxford man like Reich? How will he react to this motor-mouthed, wisecracking whirling dervish? Will he politely dismiss her? Will he recoil in elitist horror, as if he were Yo-Yo Ma getting rushed by Ginger Spice?
No!
"Hello Marjorie, how are you?" Reich says, his face lighting up with warm recognition. Then the two of them perform a little left-cheek/right-cheek kiss exchange. He knows her! He likes her! They have a rapport!
As it turns out, Reich was an occasional guest on the WRKO Radio talk show that Clapprood cohosted from 1991 to 1997. They have a laugh over the time she brashly called him at home in 1993 to confirm his reported nomination as labor secretary, and then Clapprood reminds him of a speech she once saw him give to a group of college kids. Reich pumps a fist and says, "I love young Democrats."
At that, she seizes his fist with both hands, bends her knees, and throws her head back in delight. "SO . . . DO . . . I!!!" she shouts, her scratchy voice piercing the rarefied Cambridge air. Reich beams.
This is a winning moment for Marjorie Clapprood. Reich is not only charmed by her -- he appears to take her seriously. And for Clapprood, being taken seriously is not always a given.
After a decade or so in public life -- including three terms in the state legislature, a run for lieutenant governor, a six-year talk-radio career, and a Lifetime TV show called Clapprood Live -- a few things about Clapprood are certain. She is, for better or worse, a loudmouth. She is outrageous. She is unapologetic about her attitude, her sex appeal, and her liberalism.
All of which makes some people wonder whether she can fit into a Washington establishment populated with people more in the Robert Reich mold. This is, after all, a woman who spent six years on the radio cheerily discussing sex and the potty at every opportunity. Her love of the taboo was so reliable that it's hard to imagine her not asking the superhunk Fabio, as she did in 1994, "Do you have big private parts?" And when, in 1997, Howard Stern challenged her to a ratings contest -- which, if she lost, would require her to take off her panties for him -- her response was not outrage but an offer to undress if he could tell her how many legislators make up the US Congress (he couldn't; she didn't).
It's not surprising, then, that Clapprood's critics grumble that she's all style and no substance, and that she's not qualified for the job. But at a time of peace and prosperity, of budget surpluses and Wall Street euphoria -- not to mention intern sex scandals, MSNBC, and George magazine -- politics is more about personality and entertainment, and less about issues, than ever before.
Which is why many politicos consider Marjorie Clapprood, who officially kicked off her campaign on Wednesday, the early favorite to take Joe Kennedy's place representing Massachusetts's historic Eighth Congressional District. She's certainly off to a fast start, with more than $150,000 in the bank, an all-star cast of heavyweight fundraisers, and a strong second-place showing in the race's first major poll. And judging from a night out on the stump with her, she's got fans everywhere.

Later that night, Clapprood makes her way through Estelle's, a Roxbury nightclub where disco blares and a mirror ball twirls, where nobody knows Bob Reich, where Bob Reich will never go.
But they know Clapprood, all right.
"I've been dying to meet you!" exclaims a young black woman. "I know you on radio!"
Moments later, it's the same story. "My wife is gonna flip when I tell her I saw you," a bearded white man says in wonderment. "She listened to your show all the time." It turns out he's in the band, and once the dance music stops he takes the stage to lead them in a song called "St. Margie's Blues."
This is the key to Clapprood's candidacy. No one has been dying to meet Mike Capuano. Nobody's wife will flip at the mention of George Bachrach or Tom Keane or Susan Tracy. Only Ray Flynn can compete with her star power.
"She's got the magic," notes Clapprood consultant Michael Goldman, who says her ability to take over a room reminds him of Joe Kennedy.
Clapprood's been known for that magic ever since she was first elected as a state rep from Sharon in 1984. She made an immediate sensation in the State House, impressing the boyos with her aggressive style -- but alienating many female colleagues who believed she was using sex appeal for advancement. ("I find her just disgusting," one of them told Boston magazine in 1987. "I find her obsession with sexual innuendo completely revolting.") Either way, Clapprood's passionate speaking style and her knack for causing a stir won her a spot on the 1990 gubernatorial ticket as Democratic nominee John Silber's running mate (DR. DOOM AND VA-VA-VA VOOM, shouted the Boston Herald). Silber's famous bursts of bitterness killed the ticket, though, and in 1991 Clapprood took her act to the airwaves.
Now, she says, she wants to get back into politics for the same reason she's always been drawn there: her personal story.
Born to an Irish working-class family, the 48-year-old Clapprood is the daughter of an alcoholic father who drank himself to death when she was a teenager, leaving her mother with five kids to support. Her family briefly turned to public assistance for housing and money to eat, something she has never forgotten.
"The intervention of the government was a really important thing in my life," Clapprood says. "Looking back, it astounded me what a difference those programs had made."
What it boils down to is this: she's been at the bottom, and she can tell you that government matters.
"Government has a legitimate role to play in investing in kids," she says. "And if the argument of compassion fails, the fiscally sound argument of investment must prevail." In other words, it's worth spending a little money to educate kids today instead of jailing them 20 years down the road.
This kind of unabashedly liberal philosophy applies to almost every issue Clapprood mentions. She wants a single-payer system of universal health care. She supports public financing for political campaigns. She opposes NAFTA and other foreign-policy decisions that put trade before human rights.
And she's ready to scream and yell on behalf of her positions. "I want to be Newt Gingrich's worst nightmare," she says; it's her favorite campaign line.
In the legislature, Clapprood was never known for her grasp of the fine details of policy. But that was also the rap on Joe Kennedy, who nevertheless made valuable contributions by the sheer vehemence of his arguments. Style over substance, in other words. So Clapprood has a model. And she knows it.
"I don't just want to be a vote," she says. "I want to really kick some ass."

Seinfeld is presenting a real problem. Clapprood is running late for a fundraiser of her own, at the South End loft of fashion designer David Josef. The event was supposed to start around seven, but she won't arrive until more like half past. Tonight is the Last Episode, which kicks off at eight, and there's some concern about whether Margie can go head-to-head with Jerry and win.
"Make sure they don't turn on the TV until they've had a chance to introduce me," Clapprood implores into the car phone, apparently to an aide already posted at the event.
The Ford Explorer is crowded. In the back sit a reporter and Jim Spencer, a high-strung political consultant steeped in the details of the Eighth District, who helped steer a young Joe Kennedy to victory in 1986 -- the last time this seat was truly contested.
At the wheel is Chris Spinazzola, Clapprood's genial husband of seven years. A debonair man whose strong-but-silent style contrasts with his wife's rampant energy, Spinazzola runs a family foundation that funds liberal charities and raises money with a well-known annual gala in Boston. On the campaign trail, he and Margie often hold hands and tease each other playfully. "Chris," Clapprood coos, "is just so darn adorable."
Marjorie, meanwhile, is in the passenger seat. When she's not jabbering into the phone, she's talking politics, jumping from topic to topic like . . . well, like a talk-show host.
There's her take on the Monica Lewinsky scandal: "If Hillary doesn't care, I don't care."
There's her assessment of Gingrich: "Newt the toot! I'm gonna go booga booga in his face!"
And there's her response to the prospect of the Democrats winning back Congress: "Joe Moakley would be chairman of Rules again," she says, referring to the legendary South Boston congressman and the committee he sits on. "Uncle Joe -- yes! That would be excellent!"
Somewhere, Tip O'Neill is rolling in his grave.

Clapprood swwops into David Josef's spectacular loft to the rousing applause of 40 or so thirtysomething gay men in expensive silk shirts and thin-rimmed glasses. The men watch her with delighted fascination as she works the room.
It's just before eight, but Josef steps up on a landing and assures the antsy crowd that there's plenty of time before Seinfeld. "You'll all be home, don't worry," he assures them.
Clapprood follows with a sharp stump speech full of references to her gay-rights record: her backing of the legislature's 1989 gay-rights law, her opposition to a congressional ban on gay marriage, and her fight against a 1985 state law preventing gays from becoming foster parents. (Of then-governor Michael Dukakis's support for the law, Clapprood says: "He really pooped the bed on that one.")
When she's done, someone asks Clapprood about Susan Tracy, the former Brighton state representative also running in the Eighth District, who recently acknowledged that she is a lesbian.
It's an interesting moment. As the two women in the race, and the two top contenders for the gay vote, there's a special rivalry between Clapprood and Tracy. Indeed, Clapprood's camp repeatedly and hopefully spins the notion that Tracy doesn't have a chance and will make an early departure from the race.
Clapprood starts out gently, expressing support and sympathy for Tracy's difficult experience of coming out in the heat of a campaign.
With those gestures out of the way, however, Clapprood pounces on Tracy's 1996 role in helping the socially conservative Tom Finneran round up votes in his tightly contested race for Speaker of the state House of Representatives -- a job he's since used to squelch a long list of progressive bills, especially ones dealing with abortion and gay rights.
"Do you want someone who's going to stand up and vote for a Speaker who'll hold up your issues?" she asks as several heads nod in understanding.
But with Margie in the house, things can stay serious for only so long.
"You probably shouldn't sing the `Sit on My Face' song until after you're elected," somebody calls out from the audience. An explosion of laughter. For a moment, even Margie gets a little flushed.
"We fucking love her," one of the men says. "She's our girl."

East Boston, 8:30. Clapprood is working a buzz saw in her cramped, chaotic campaign bunker in East Boston's Jeffries Point. Ten miles and a world away from David Josef's tony loft, this dusty, wood-paneled space was once a tiny neighborhood bar. Inexplicably, a faded Cleveland Browns pennant hangs from one wall. Seinfeld flickers on a small TV, but the dozen or so volunteers nailing campaign signs onto wooden stakes don't pay much attention.
Clapprood's signs are an amusing reminder of the continued importance of ethnic allegiance in Boston politics. Not only are the signs green and white, but they conspicuously bear her Irish maiden name: MARJORIE O'NEILL CLAPPROOD FOR CONGRESS.
That volunteers in mostly Italian East Boston are nailing together shamrocky campaign signs underscores a weakness of Clapprood's campaign to which her opponents repeatedly point: she has no real ethnic or geographic base. Clapprood can play the Irish card, but she'll never be a favorite daughter the way Kennedy was a favorite son.
Perhaps more significant, Clapprood is something of a carpetbagger: although she was born in Boston, she's spent most of her life living outside the Eighth District. It was only last month that she began renting a house in Watertown, and she hasn't sold her home in Sharon. Polling seems to show that few voters care about residency, but Clapprood's lack of a reliable regional stronghold -- as compared to George Bachrach's grip on Belmont and Watertown, or Mike Capuano's ownership of Somerville -- could be a problem.
Still, Clapprood has advantages the other candidates lack. Her gender, for one.
"I think it's particularly important that we have women in Washington who will protect a woman's right to choose, who will insist on daycare in the workplace, wage parity, and women's safety in the streets and at home," she says. Clapprood rarely misses an opportunity to note that just 55 out of the 535 members of Congress are women. "An outrage," she calls it.
And then there's that star power again. Half an hour after cracking up a room full of gay South End yuppies, here she is with a bunch of Eastie union guys in Patriots sweatshirt and Bruins jackets. And what is she doing? Autographing a pile of pictures.

Of course, not everyone is always so charmed. Take the woman who is practically shouting in her face at the moment.
"You had a loud talk show that nobody listened to!" yells the assailant, an ornery, middle-aged black woman with a neo-flattop haircut whom Clapprood has tried to glad-hand at a Dimock Community Health Center fair in Roxbury.
"I haven't seen you here in the black community since the last time you were running" she says. "And now you're back because you're running again."
Clapprood is getting mad, but she doesn't give an inch. Her face steels, her teeth clench.
"I respect your passion," she replies with slow enunciation, "but you're way off base . . . I grew up in Whiskey Point" -- a low-income enclave near Jamaica Pond. "I babysat in Mission Hill."
Clapprood manages to mollify her adversary enough to get her name and arrange to talk about black neighborhood issues sometime soon. It's an impressive feat, but Clapprood walks away clearly fuming. One gets the feeling she likes to be liked. That she expects to be liked.
But for all the adoration of Clapprood's fans, her "negatives" -- poll numbers reflecting voters with an unfavorable opinion -- are higher than those for any of her rivals but Flynn. A recent poll taken by George Bachrach's campaign showed that among those familiar with Clapprood, 42 percent had a positive opinion of her and 32 percent had a negative one. In short, she pisses a lot of people off. And once her opponents begin to resurrect some of her more tasteless on-air observations, things could get much worse.
"There's a cloud around Clapprood that may or may not dissipate," says Lou DiNatale, a political analyst at UMass Boston's McCormack Institute of Public Affairs.
Perhaps that's inevitable. Michael Goldman argues that much of Clapprood's popularity comes from her controversial nature, from her willingness to push the envelope. "Margie will not win unless she creates enemies," he says. "There have to be people who don't like her."

Clapprood takes the podium in the luncheon tent at the Dimock center. The audience of about 200 people, mostly young black women, has just chattered right through the bland remarks of a state representative they don't know and don't much care about.
But the minute Clapprood runs onto the stage -- beaming, waving, kicking a long leg into the air -- something like a blast wave explodes through the tent. Faces light up. Conversations stop. It feels as though someone's just pulled a scratchy Woody Guthrie record off the turntable and started blaring Chumbawamba.
Clapprood pounces on the microphone, playing the crowd just right. "I'm loving youuu . . . yes, I a-am!" she calls out in a jubilant, sing-songy voice.
The audience roars with approval as Clapprood practically attacks the microphone. You almost expect the paper plates to blow off the tables. Most of the women here clearly feel a bond with Clapprood, and if they didn't realize she was running for Congress, she makes sure they know now.
"I wanna scare the heck out of Newt Gingrich," she declares, perhaps her sixth variation on the line in the past 24 hours. As always, it draws delighted cheers and applause.
Newt Gingrich may not have any idea who this fireball of a woman is. But the noise Clapprood is eliciting right now should scare the heck out of Tracy, Bachrach, Flynn, Capuano, and all the rest of her opponents. For at moments like these, to bend a phrase, all politics is style.
Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.