Campaign supernova

Chris Gabrieli becomes all the buzz in the race for Joe Kennedy's seat. Plus, Finneran versus Clapprood.

Talking Politics by Michael Crowley

Anybody who watches TV in the Boston area has almost surely seen his face. One viewer recently joked that he's become like a spouse: the last person you see before going to bed, and the first you see when you wake up.

He is Eighth Congressional District candidate Chris Gabrieli. And he's running ads. Lots of them. So many, in fact, that he's lost count.

"Let's see," the bookish millionaire said haltingly at a press conference held last week to -- what else? -- announce a new ad. "There's the crime ad, there's this one, minimum wage . . . " With his press secretary's help, Gabrieli finally estimated the number now on the air at four. "I don't get to watch the news much," he explained apologetically, referring to the programming most heavily interrupted by his campaign spots.

Just a few weeks ago, this loomingly tall, soft-spoken venture capitalist was still a complete unknown, even to political insiders, in the race to succeed retiring representative Joe Kennedy (D-Brighton). He'd never run for office before and had few connections to the traditional Boston political machine. At first, some wondered if he was a mischief-making "straw candidate." Underscoring the point, the press still struggles even to get his name right. The Boston Globe's David Nyhan recently referred to him as "Chris Gabrielli" and "James Gabrielli" -- in the same column, no less. In this month's Boston magazine he's "Peter" Gabrieli. (And -- full disclosure -- the Phoenix ran the wrong picture with a May 15 Gabrieli profile.)

But since he first hit the airwaves at the end of May, Gabrieli has been a potent wild card in the race for Kennedy's seat. For now, the conventional wisdom still holds: former Boston mayor Ray Flynn and former talk-radio host and state rep Marjorie Clapprood are the ones to beat. After jumping out to early leads in the polls, though, Clapprood and Flynn have done little to define their candidacies beyond the rationale of widespread name recognition.

Gabrieli, by contrast, has been everywhere. The issue ads with which he's bombarded the airwaves -- to the tune of an estimated $400,000 so far, with perhaps a few million dollars' worth yet to come -- have been setting the terms of the debate. And Gabrieli has been putting his mouth where his money is, winning the respect of both local pundits and opponents for his intellectual substance and his genial nature. In addition to TV time, Gabrieli has easily scored more newspaper ink and insider buzz in the past month than have any of his rivals.

"Whether people want to admit it or not," says Democratic consultant Mary Anne Marsh, "Chris Gabrieli has defined this race. He's provided the context."

As recently as early June, Clapprood consultant Michael Goldman told the Globe: "During the course of the campaign, we are going to learn whether his campaign is about issues and values or just a millionaire who has chosen to run for Congress rather than sail around the world or climb Mt. Everest."

Just one month later, it seems clear that Gabrieli's run is not just the product of another vapid supercapitalist's nauseating ego. With the help of Squier Knapp Ochs Communications, the firm that created most of the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign's advertising, Gabrieli -- a former chairman of the policy think tank MassINC -- has run smart spots on such topics as charter schools, crime, and, in his latest round, health maintenance organizations (HMOs). The consistent thread running through Gabrieli's advertising and public appearances is an homage to what he calls "the power of ideas," typified by his vigorous support for charter schools and his original take on familiar issues. (Gabrieli, for instance, seems to be the only candidate who has raised the issue of changing the absurdly regressive payroll tax used to finance Social Security.)

In an apparent offensive against front-runners Clapprood and Flynn, Gabrieli has also begun to show an open disdain for cliché-ridden, old-school liberalism: "There's a lot of sloganeering, like `every child is precious,' that substantively means nothing," Gabrieli said at a recent candidates' forum.

One upshot of Gabrieli's new prominence is that other worthy candidates looking to gather momentum have been obscured. Take, for example, Boston city councilor Tom Keane. Keane, an intellectual pro-business Democrat from the Back Bay, was all set to carve a moderate niche for himself among the Eighth District's Roosevelt liberals until Gabrieli came along with his sacks of money.

Keane acknowledges similarities between his campaign and Gabrieli's: "I was in Somerville the other day," he says, "and someone came up and said, `Keane, I really like your ad on charter schools.' "

The ad, of course, was Gabrieli's. But Keane says the confusion points to the fact that Gabrieli's "top-down" campaign has failed to truly connect him to average voters. "At the end of the day you have a mishmash of ads with no sense of why you should vote for this person," Keane says. "I believe you have to run a very strong and aggressive ground campaign."

Another candidate drowned out by the Gabrieli buzz is George Bachrach, the former state senator from Watertown. For someone who's been able to raise money and make a strong showing in some polls, Bachrach -- who peddles a more neighborhood-oriented, traditionally liberal message than Gabrieli's -- has struggled for attention recently. (Next week Bachrach expects to report $450,000 raised in the month of June, a formidable total likely to leave him with more cash on hand than any of his nonmillionaire rivals.)

Bachrach concedes that the campaign spotlight has swung to Gabrieli, but he says his rival's candidacy doesn't threaten him. "I think there is an inevitable infatuation by the media with the women in the race and the millionaires in the race," Bachrach says. "I understand that. It's fun to watch. But it's not connected with the real progressive issues of this race."

Indeed, several candidates and consultants point to polling data suggesting that, despite his ad blitz and his generally favorable press so far, Gabrieli has barely budged from the name-recognition basement. And everyone's keenly aware of businessman candidates like Al Checchi, the California gubernatorial candidate who dropped $40 million to finish last in that state's June Democratic primary.

Nevertheless, the pure brainwashing power of mass advertising is not something to be underestimated. And Gabrieli's ability to put issues of his choosing on television before any other candidate can afford to air ads will continue to allow him to shape the campaign debate. His opponents are already being distracted from their own messages in order to respond to Gabrieli's positions on charter schools and HMOs.

They're responding to his cash flow as well. A candidates' forum now isn't complete without three or four cracks about Gabrieli's checkbook. At a June 25 forum in Cambridge, Clapprood delighted the crowd by rising from her seat to challenge Gabrieli to a $1 million spending cap, which he gently but firmly refused.

And after he began running an ad last month attacking HMOs for "gag rules" that might prevent doctors from suggesting certain treatments for their patients, an association of Massachusetts HMOs demanded that he withdraw the ad, calling it "entirely inaccurate" and "deceptive." (The group contends that no Massachusetts HMO has a gag rule.)

So what did Gabrieli do in response? Why, he filmed a new ad!

"This . . . is a blatant attempt to gag me," Gabrieli intoned at his press conference last week. Moments later, his newest spot was airing on a television behind him: "HMOs and insurance companies -- attacking Chris Gabrieli . . . " And so another chapter was written in the story of the richest Bostonian to run for the House of Representatives. And these days, his opponents are hoping for a sudden plot twist as soon as possible.

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Looks like a war of words is under way between two of the most colorful rhetoricians in state politics.

Readers of last week's article about Eighth Congressional District candidate Susan Tracy might recall some choice words House Speaker Thomas Finneran (D-Mattapan) had for Marjorie Clapprood. None too pleased with Clapprood's zings at the liberal Tracy for her chummy relationship with the socially conservative Speaker, Finneran told the Phoenix that he'd gotten three messages from Clapprood seeking his support for her campaign. "All of a sudden because I'm with Susan I guess I've become Attila the Hun," Finneran said. "But there are three calls asking for Attila's active support and commitment. So there's a huge hypocrisy at work here."

This week, Clapprood was quick to fire back with some sharp words of her own for the politician she called "the little man with the big ego."

"It shows an ego that's out of control," Clapprood explains. "Either that or he thinks he's clairvoyant, because he ascribed my motives without ever returning my phone calls."

Acknowledging her attempts to contact the Speaker, Clapprood contends that she wanted to urge passage of a bill backed by the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, a union she joined during her talk-radio days. Passed by the Senate but stalled in Finneran's House, the bill would prohibit "noncompetition clauses" barring an employee from jumping ship from one network or station to a rival outlet.

"I left a note with his secretary saying we wanted to talk about the bill, and made a couple of follow-up phone calls, and I never heard back from him," Clapprood says.

"I was interested in freeing some pro-labor legislation that's being held up with some other pro-labor bills," she adds, hinting at growing frustration among union leaders with Finneran's unresponsiveness to their agenda.

Unable to resist one last tweak, Clapprood acknowledged that she had sought the support of the more liberal man whom Finneran, with Susan Tracy's support, defeated in a 1996 battle for the Speakership. "I did make a call to Richie Voke," she says, "but not to the Speaker."

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