Clapprood awakening

Margie's explosive campaign for Congress threatens to fizzle

Talking Politics by Michael Crowley

Has the clock struck midnight for Marjorie Clapprood? A few short weeks ago, Clapprood was a charmed Cinderella in the race for the Boston area's Eighth District congressional seat. With an early profile as the strongest challenger to the front-running Ray Flynn, the irrepressible former talk-radio star seemed poised to make good on her promise of marching into the US House of Representatives and becoming "Newt Gingrich's worst nightmare."

But the nightmare may yet be Clapprood's. These days, her carriage is turning back into a pumpkin, and her glass slipper is gone. She's failed to reel in big endorsements, organize an effective campaign organization, or win editorial praise in the local media. One of the strongest rationales for her candidacy -- her gender -- has been neutralized by the surprisingly strong showing of the race's other woman, former Brighton state representative Susan Tracy. And some other candidates who were slow out of the gate look to be hitting a groove.

But the clearest evidence of Clapprood's troubles came last week, when she reported a meager $100,000 dollars raised since the beginning of May. Pretty weak for a ballyhooed celebrity who has placed second only to former Boston mayor Flynn in most polls.

Clapprood's number-two position allowed her to pitch herself to liberals as the best hope for derailing the pro-life, socially conservative Flynn. Now, some suggest that with her once-electrified campaign in a summer brownout, that status is in jeopardy.

"She's in trouble," says UMass political analyst Lou DiNatale. "If she misses one more time on fundraising, good-bye."

It may seem like a crude indicator, but fundraising is a key measure of a candidate's support and future potential. Clapprood herself set an especially high standard for her campaign, bragging about an early $150,000 bank account and a team of bigfoot fundraisers. And politicos agree that Clapprood will need to rely more heavily on expensive paid advertising than most of her nine rivals for the Democratic nomination. A former state representative, Clapprood has been out of politics since running for lieutenant governor in 1990. And having lived in suburban Sharon for years before moving into the district this spring, she has no natural voter base in the Eighth.

"One of the assumptions was that money would be the key to a Clapprood candidacy," DiNatale says. "Her lack of fundraising support may be reflected by her lack of support in the district. She should have taken off. She was in the top tier."

Clapprood is "running on name-ID fumes," says a rival campaign aide. "There's no there there. On substance, on organization, on endorsements, on fundraising, on every level, I feel like she's just coming up short."

Even Clapprood's own people concede that the campaign has suffered from some inertia. "It took longer than I thought to set up what is now a very nice operation," says Clapprood consultant Michael Goldman, who adds that fundraising will pick up with several events scheduled in the coming weeks.

But the damage has already been done. Last week Clapprood's campaign showed a total of $250,000 raised thus far. Not counting $100,000 in personal funds, that's less than has been raised by such lower-profile candidates as Somerville mayor Michael Capuano ($250,000) and even low-budget Susan Tracy ($207,000).

And then there's former Watertown state senator George Bachrach, who weighed in with a remarkable $450,000 raised. Bachrach, too, has pumped in $150,000 of his own funds. But that still leaves him as the candidate who's raised the most money. And based in part on a poll conducted by his own campaign, Bachrach now argues that he's in the number-two spot, not Clapprood.

"I feel like we're in a good position in second place," Bachrach declares.

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After an initial supernova of largely good publicity, the media tide has turned against Clapprood. Indeed, when Clapprood has gotten ink recently, it's been anything but positive. In June, the Boston Herald's Wayne Woodlief spent a column deploring her knee-jerk opposition to charter schools. And in the July issue of Boston magazine, columnist Jon Keller ridiculed Clapprood as a shallow phony.

Ironically, Keller's thrashing led to Clapprood's one significant respite from her recent slump.

It all started when Keller, after napalming Clapprood's "narrow, outdated politics, her-out-of-control narcissism, and the mean streak that makes a sham of her on-stage persona," delivered his real roundhouse kick: the tale of a recent angry exchange he had with Clapprood after she appeared as a guest on his Channel 56 political talk show.

Keller says Clapprood blew up after his critical on-air treatment and snapped, "Would you like me better if I shaved my head and put on 50 pounds?" Keller took this to be a reference to -- in his words -- "openly gay, short-haired, overweight Sue Tracy." "Borderline homophobic?" he asked.

If Keller is right, it's a devastating indictment of Clapprood, who has long defended gay rights and is beloved within much of the gay community.

But Clapprood has lashed back with a letter to Boston, attacking Keller's "bizarre interpretation of my comments." Clapprood says she was fed up with what she sees as Keller's sexist disdain for her glamour-girl image and was invoking the classic image of a portly, balding state pol. The link to Tracy, she says, is Keller's alone.

And rather than destroy Clapprood's credibility with the gay community, Keller's piece appears to have rallied at least a segment of it to her side. Last week, the Boston gay and lesbian weekly Bay Windows strongly defended Clapprood in a news article (pointedly headlined IN CLAPPROOD FLAP, WHO'S THE HOMOPHOBE?) and in an accompanying editorial.

Calling Clapprood "the leading light amongst pro-gay heterosexual fundraisers," editor Jeff Epperly denounced the "unfair slaps" at the candidate. "Inexplicably, Keller interprets Clapprood's easy-to-understand rhetorical question regarding his targeting her hair and figure as a broadside against the only lesbian in the race. . . . Tracy strikes me as neither overweight nor shaved-headed," he wrote. (Poor Susan Tracy: she campaigns on pension reform and education, and people end up debating her weight.)

The Clapprood campaign is thrilled that a leading gay-community voice like Bay Windows has risen to its defense. "I think [Keller's attack is] the single best thing that's happened to the campaign, bizarrely," Goldman says. That may be true. But it's a sad commentary on Clapprood's candidacy.

Part of Clapprood's problem may be that rather than allowing her to shine, her flamboyant persona has made her look silly alongside her earnest, low-key opponents. When Clapprood speaks at one of the race's dry candidates' forums, her glib are-we-having-fun-yet routine often leaves the impression that you've cut away from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to The Nanny. To be sure, Clapprood is an articulate and forceful liberal voice. But she has offered little in the way of original thinking. Contrast that to some of her opponents' smart contributions, such as Susan Tracy's proposal to make worker pensions portable or Boston city councilor Tom Keane's inspiring "war on ignorance." (See "Keane Strategy.")

Michael Goldman maintains that the natural evolution of the race will favor Clapprood. "The thing that has been a problem is that Margie's great strength is campaigning," he says. "We haven't had the opportunity, because of the big field . . . for Margie to stand on the stage next to two people and have people say, `Wow, look at the difference.' "

"You're going to see a substantial difference when the campaign has solidified more to the point where it's a two- or three-person race," Goldman adds. That may be so. But these days, Marjorie Clapprood must wonder whether she can still be sure of making it that far.

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