Bachrach's attack

George Bachrach is determined not to go down among these runners-up of the world. But as he seeks to replace the retiring Joseph Kennedy (D-Brighton) as the next congressman from the Boston area, it's not always easy for Bachrach to convince people that he's anything else.

For starters, there's his physical appearance: Bachrach is a short man who wears thick glasses and a bushy mustache. He also wields a sarcastic brand of deadpan humor, which he often turns on himself. ("There are too many tall people in Congress already," he quips. And, "They asked me to take off my glasses, but I said the nose and mustache came with them.")

But more significantly, there are the two defining campaigns of his political career. In 1986, when this seat was last open, Bachrach was the outmatched rival to a young Joe Kennedy; he finished a distant second. Then in 1994, he somehow decided that he could unseat the phenomenally charismatic Republican governor, Bill Weld. He didn't even win the Democratic primary.

Of course, those campaigns are but two moments in an 18-year political career during which Bachrach has served three terms as a state senator from Watertown and become a liberal stalwart. But in his campaign to replace Kennedy as the representative from the state's Eighth Congressional District -- which encompasses most of Boston and the nearby towns of Chelsea, Charlestown, Somerville, Cambridge, and Belmont -- Bachrach has had trouble being taken seriously. Once again, he finds himself a lower-profile, less charismatic challenger to such big-name competitors as former Boston mayor Ray Flynn and former talk-radio host Marjorie Clapprood. (Back in 1986, Bachrach sometimes made light of his other-guy status by introducing himself with a sardonic "Hi, I'm Joe Kennedy." These days he likes to joke that he and the tall, blond Clapprood are "identical twins separated at birth.")

In this race, however, Bachrach has argued forcefully that he's no also-ran. He has pointed to his impressive fundraising: a $450,000 bank account makes him the best-financed nonmillionaire in the race. He has flaunted endorsements in his "base" neighborhoods of Watertown, Belmont, and Somerville, including one from no less a liberal icon than Cambridge resident and former secretary of labor Robert Reich.

In May, Bachrach's own campaign even produced a poll showing him in second place behind Ray Flynn, the race's undisputed front-runner. That contradicted most previous surveys, which had shown Clapprood well ahead of the eight other Democrats chasing Flynn. By Bachrach's own admission, the race's first major poll -- a May Boston Globe/WBZ-TV survey -- had left him "dead and buried" in the middle of the pack. So when Bachrach unveiled his serendipitous numbers, insiders reacted with something less than total credulity.

But suddenly fortune has turned Bachrach's way. Last week he was celebrating a Boston Herald/WCVB-TV poll that showed some surprising results. The survey had Flynn maintaining his lead with 18 percent of the vote. But in second place was not Clapprood but Somerville mayor Michael Capuano, with 12 percent. Bachrach showed up in third place, tied with Clapprood at 10 percent.

A gritty urban conservative in the Flynn mode, Capuano is an unlikely magnet for liberals concerned about the former Boston mayor's rightward leanings on social issues like abortion and gay rights. That means Bachrach can now credibly argue that he and Clapprood -- who placed a decisive second in the May Globe poll -- are in what you might call a sub-primary battle to be considered the alternative to Flynn.

Bachrach's 10 percent showing in the Herald survey may not seem awe-inspiring, but with 10 Democrats running, a mere 20 percent may be all it takes to win the all-important September 15 primary. And there's more good news for Bachrach in the poll: his ratio of favorable (46 percent) to unfavorable (12 percent) ratings was the highest in the field. Pollster R. Kelly Myers even told the Herald that Bachrach has the best shot at beating Flynn.

Thus the stage is set perfectly for Bachrach's D-Day landing: a $400,000 television ad campaign that hit the airwaves on Wednesday. Crafted by Democratic media wizard Ken Swope, Bachrach's spots should be funny and fast-paced contrasts to the dozens of blandly earnest ads that will clutter the airwaves in the coming weeks. One shows Bachrach talking health care before a charmingly rambunctious audience of seniors; another shows him trying to manage a rowdy classroom where one kid sketches a Martian-like caricature of "Mr. Bachrach."

"The millionaires have had their surge," Bachrach says, referring to the high-profile summer enjoyed by big-spending venture capitalist Chris Gabrieli and environmentalist John O'Connor. "Now it's our turn."

ON A recent August afternoon, George Bachrach stood at the center of a depressingly colorless common area at the Burns Apartments senior home in Cambridge, with the eyes of a dozen or so residents on him as he delivered a well-practiced spiel touting his liberal credentials. Invoking his Alzheimer's-stricken mother, Bachrach carefully explained his plan to make Medicare coverage pay for home-care services for more senior citizens.

At first it wasn't clear how much some of these retirees took away from Bachrach's talk. One man asked a rambling question about Fidel Castro, "Asian weapons," and loansharking. Another woman responded with touching alarm to his support for high-speed rail service: "Can you tell me why it's so important to get to New York in less than an hour and maybe crash?"

But it was apparent that on some level Bachrach got through to his audience. "He's tried hard to do things that everyone else promises to do," said Lucille Simmons, a bright-eyed, white-haired African-American woman. "He's not only fighting for himself, he's fighting for us."

That fighting image is critical to the impression Bachrach, 46, hopes to convey to the voters of the Eighth District. "Bachrach doesn't back down," declares one of his campaign brochures. "He stands up. To entrenched political power. To big money special interests. To political bullies like Newt Gingrich."

What sets him apart from the rest of his competitors, Bachrach says, is his willingness to stand up for liberal principles regardless of the prevailing political winds. Saying he was propelled into public life by a sense of "outrage and injustice" instilled in him by Jewish parents who fled Nazi-occupied Europe, Bachrach calls himself an "unabashed, unrepentant, and unreconstructed liberal" who has remained ideologically pure throughout his political career.

"The Democratic Party has been backpedaling and apologizing and compromising and now stands for very little," he says. "I have a strong commitment to a progressive agenda that is unwavering."

Bachrach's admirers say this is what defines him. "The one quality that is most missing from politics today is the courage to pursue things that are correct but sometimes unpopular," says prominent state representative Jim Marzilli (D-Arlington), a State House liberal and Bachrach supporter. "It's the courage to take on powerful figures, whether it be industry groups or other politicians, that we need to see more of. George is one of the few people around who will really stick out his neck on issues that don't necessarily attract huge crowds of fawning politicians."

Liberal principle was a theme Bachrach flogged as a candidate for governor in 1994. At the time, he attacked his Democratic opponents as "Republicrats," saying that they backed welfare reform, low taxes, and the death penalty merely to give the public what they thought it wanted.

Now Bachrach is pitching a platform that centers on major new federal spending for education -- including $5.5 billion in additional funding for early childhood intervention programs, increased teacher training, and $2 billion for new school construction -- all to be financed by a 14.5 percent cut in the Pentagon budget over the next five years. Targeting "obsolete" Cold War weapons, Bachrach's plan would save $189 billion in military spending (a highly optimistic figure, given Republican control of Congress). He also decries US arms sales abroad and, as a long-time champion of gay rights, supports gay marriage and a law barring workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

In the field of ultraliberals seeking Kennedy's job, however, such rhetoric is hardly unique. Bachrach disparages the moderate "New Democrats" in the race -- Chris Gabrieli and Boston city councilor Tom Keane -- as out of touch with the district, calling their support for charter schools "elitist." But on most of the issues Bachrach supports -- spending more on schools, fighting off efforts to privatize Social Security, overhauling campaign finance, creating a national health care system -- he hears little disagreement.

So he touts other credentials, like his record as a state senator who led a rules reform effort against former Senate president William Bulger. And he argues that his service in both the public and the private sector -- since leaving the Senate, Bachrach has been a downtown lawyer, a journalism professor, a TV commentator, and, now, the head of a political telemarketing company called the Share Group -- offers "a good blend" that allows him to appreciate policy and the day-to-day concerns of the average voter in equal measure.

But Bachrach's well-polished act doesn't sit well with his rivals, many of whom resentfully describe him as smug, arrogant, and sometimes condescending. In particular, critics chafe at his Mr. Principle act -- especially in light of what some call a glaring lapse in his record of liberal purity.

After losing to Joe Kennedy, Bachrach left the state senate in 1987 and joined the downtown Boston law firm of Brown, Rudnick, Freed & Gesmer as a partner. There, Bachrach was a rainmaker charged with boosting the firm's political clout. As part of that role, in 1991 and 1992 he not only personally made small campaign contributions to such leading state Republicans as then-governor Bill Weld, then-lieutenant governor Paul Cellucci, and conservative state treasurer Joe Malone, but he also forwarded hundreds of dollars in donations from his colleagues, along with letters of glowing praise.

"This [contribution] is offered as a gesture of respect from partners in our firm who are deeply impressed by your leadership and commitment to better government for the Commonwealth," read letters to Malone and Weld cosigned by Bachrach.

Bachrach may bristle at the questions, but the standard he has been held to is of his own making. Why, his opponents ask, can he plead an innocent act of "bipartisanship" while he disparages moderate Democrats who embrace GOP ideas as nefarious "Republicrats"?

"He is a hypocrite," says one top aide to a Bachrach rival. "He is so convinced of his purity and brilliance that he thinks he's above it all."

If his campaign truly takes off, however, a little Republican-cuddling might not be the worst charge hurled at Bachrach. Bachrach was a close friend and business associate of Michael Ansara, the former '60s radical who pleaded guilty last year to engineering a money-laundering scheme behind the invalidated 1996 reelection of Teamsters president Ron Carey. (See "Bachrach's Ansara Connection," page 10.) So far, no one has proved any wrongdoing, or even direct knowledge of crimes, on Bachrach's part -- but his opponents are sniffing around the Share Group like bloodhounds.

As it happens, Bachrach was hit with his first mudball this week, when a story surfaced in the Globe revealing that he has thousands of dollars invested in mutual funds with holdings in the tobacco industry. Bachrach, a strident opponent of big tobacco, had just attacked Marjorie Clapprood for votes she'd cast against stricter antismoking laws as a state legislator in the 1980s. (Convinced that Clapprood had ratted him out to the Globe, Bachrach was livid this week: "What you're seeing is a lashing out by someone who is desperate and who cannot defend her record." But in fact, the Phoenix has confirmed that -- renowned as Clapprood spin doctor Michael Goldman is for dishing dirt -- the dime-drop did not come from her campaign.)

Barring a bombshell revelation in the Ansara case, however, none of these lines of attack seem likely to wound Bachrach badly. In fact, he might take perverse pleasure from the fact that his opponents are planting negative stories about him. It means that at last others are agreeing with his long-held belief: that he is one of the strongest candidates in this race. It means that at last, George Bachrach is being taken seriously.