Substance abuse

Have you found the campaign season superficial and confusing? Here is everything you need to know.

by Michael Crowley

In theory, at least, 1998 should be a dream of an election year. For pure drama, you've got an incumbent governor in danger of being dethroned. Two sharply contrasting candidates for attorney general are waging a fight as bitter as it is consequential. And in the race to succeed Representative Joe Kennedy (D-Boston) in Congress, 10 of the Boston area's leading political figures are dueling in a nationally watched campaign.

Meanwhile, these and other races are playing out in a rare political climate. This is a time of relative prosperity. Unemployment is low and budgets are in surplus. Fears about taxes and the size of government are at a low ebb. Incendiary issues that marked past campaigns -- such as term limits, the death penalty, and quick-fix tax cuts -- have largely been absent. Instead, candidates have been able to focus on fundamental, often subtle, long-term problems. How do we improve failing schools? How do we give more people access to health care? How do we help workers left behind by a changing economy?

Calm and prosperity, however, are not good for politics. Voters are disengaged. Turnout is expected to hit rock bottom.

That shouldn't be. This year's election -- whose primaries, a crucial step, are September 15 -- comes at a pivotal moment for Massachusetts and the country. Choices made in the months ahead could have profound effects for years to come. The Massachusetts Eighth Congressional District's next representative will help to determine America's political agenda at a time when the nation's wealth is matched only by its inequality.

At the state level, the stakes are even greater. A new governor will vastly influence what course we chart now that the psychic and economic wounds of the last recession have finally healed. As UMass political analyst Lou DiNatale puts it: "Dukakis and the anti-Dukakis, Bill Weld, are gone. This is a new generation of Democrats and Republicans."

In these races and others, candidates have been taking a rare long view of public policy. "I've been impressed," says Tripp Jones, executive director of the public-policy think tank MassINC. "There's been a great deal of discussion about the economy, about who's winning and who's not."

It hasn't been easy to keep up with the issues in these campaigns. For one thing, there are so many people running it can be hard just to keep all the names straight. The local media haven't shown much interest in substance, either. Here, then, is a tour of some of the most important issues in the state's top primary campaigns.

Eighth Congressional District

"I love that race," says CNN political analyst and former district resident William Schneider. "Every wing of the Democratic Party is represented." Indeed, the primary field includes moderate "New Democrats," old liberals, minorities, and urban populists. "You have everything but a Free Silver populist," Schneider jokes, referring to the turn-of-the-century presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan.

Ten Democrats are on the ballot for the primary on Septem-ber 15, and the victor is all but certain to win the general election. These contenders for Joe Kennedy's seat tend to pile up on the left flank of issues ranging from campaign-finance reform to health care -- but not always.

Take the issue that every candidate calls priority number one: education. There may be no issue with a more fundamental bearing on society. And, as polls here and around the nation show, there may be no issue of greater concern to the electorate.

Most of the Democrats running for the Eighth agree that America's public school system is pretty rotten. "The public schools are absolutely failing," argues Boston city councilor Tom Keane. But the sharply contrasting remedies they propose make education a defining issue in the race.

In fact, education exposes the field's basic ideological composition: eight of the candidates are old-school liberals with visions of an expensive new round of government activism. The two "New Democrats" -- the earnest Keane and the low-key venture capitalist Chris Gabrieli -- have staked out distinctly more moderate territory.

What does that mean for the education debate? The New Democrats focus more on reforming education policy and supporting innovations such as charter schools and pilot schools, which are free of union and school board restrictions.

The Liberal Eight, by contrast, argue that public schools need more money and cheerleading. Bachrach and former Brighton state representative Susan Tracy, for instance, warn against demonizing students and teachers. Former state representative Marjorie Clapprood argues against "abandoning" the public school system for charter schools, saying that the government need only invest more in early childhood education.

What all the candidates do share is a hunger for major new education spending. Former Watertown state senator George Bachrach wants some $44 billion of it. Keane has declared a multibillion-dollar "War on Ignorance." Somerville mayor Michael Capuano and others want major spending to build and repair school buildings nationwide.

Both the cheerleaders and the reformers have strong arguments. But public schools today are such a catastrophe that the real burden of proof now lies with the current system's liberal defenders, not with ambitious reformers like Keane and Gabrieli (although some critics say the real burden lies with every candidate to explain how a member of Congress can fix Boston's schools from Washington).

Second only to education for its sheer scope and complexity is the future of Social Security. Until recently the program was widely considered the untouchable "third rail" of American politics, but calls for its reform have been moving into the political mainstream.

This is the basic dilemma: many experts say that Social Security, the guaranteed safety net for all working Americans, will go broke when millions of retiring baby boomers strain the system in a few years. To fatten Social Security accounts, some in Washington want to invest a chunk of the system's money in the stock market. These people claim the result would be a bigger return on our investments; critics say we'd be sacrificing the system's safety-net quality in the name of greater, and far from guaranteed, profits. There are also other possibilities for reform, such as raising the retirement age or imposing a means test that would cut benefits for the wealthiest recipients. It's a complicated, important debate that the next Congress may well settle.

Like a mantra, the candidates for Kennedy's seat repeat that Social Security "must be protected at all costs." Yet few of them show any sophisticated thinking on the subject. Some, like Marjorie Clapprood and Boston city councilor Charles Yancey, seem to have little more to say at all. Others, like George Bachrach, cite liberal columnist Robert Kuttner's argument that, thanks to a strong economy and low unemployment, "Social Security will be just fine." According to Kuttner, "the real threat to the system is political," posed by free-market zealots and Wall Street financiers who stand to profit from government investments.

Again, it's a New Democrat who stands out. Chris Gabrieli, who shows the most detailed understanding of the issue, doesn't buy Kuttner's school of all-is-well thinking and supports some modest reforms. Most admirably, he's the only candidate to highlight the disproportionate chunk that the Social Security payroll tax takes from the paychecks of lower-income workers. (Meanwhile, Susan Tracy contributes the worthy idea of making pensions portable from job to job.)

On health care, however, even the New Democrats don't break from their opponents. Everyone calls for universal health care and the need to clamp down on HMOs. "We must put patients before profits" may be the most clichéd line of the campaign. It is hard to discern important differences among the candidates here.

Finally, an issue hardly on the national agenda but crucial to the Eighth District: affordable housing. Here the differences aren't so much a matter of opinion -- everyone wants to reverse Republican cuts in the housing budget -- as a matter of emphasis. But it's Susan Tracy and Mike Capuano who have largely claimed the issue for themselves. Tracy's ideas in particular stand out: pressuring landlords to renew low-rent leases for hundreds of low-income families and senior citizens; creating tax credits for people paying more than 30 percent of their income in rent; boosting funding for local Community Development Corporations (CDCs).

By now you've probably figured out that this group is proposing to spend a lot of money. Where's it going to come from? Most of the candidates are generally hostile to tax cuts but stop short of calling for soak-the-rich hikes. Instead, they would feast on our swollen $250 billion military budget.

George Bachrach wants to shave the military's allowance by 14.5 percent over five years -- or some $38 billion per year. Clapprood wants our allies to share more of the cost of international alliances. At one candidates' forum, Alex Rodriguez even seemed to blame the army for violence in America.

But here the field does not divide in predictable ways. Not everyone is keen on defense cuts, and the biggest critics are not the New Democrats but the populists. Michael Capuano, for instance, gets visibly riled by such talk. So does former Boston mayor Ray Flynn, whose sole substantive contribution to the campaign may be his plea for an internationalist foreign policy.

Flynn's humanitarianism aside, none of the candidates has shown much appreciation for present-day national security threats. The point is not that realistic budget cuts are a bad idea; it's that none of the would-be cutters has offered a broader view of today's national security environment. Those who claim that Cold War threats are gone must not ignore what has replaced them: the specter of rogue nations armed with missiles and terrorists wielding weapons of mass destruction.

The candidates for the Eighth have often been more willing to declare their positions than to follow through with real policy debates. But at least the race has revolved around serious issues. The great irony is that it's the current front-runner, Ray Flynn, who has contributed the fewest ideas.

Governor

The Massachusetts governor's campaigns of 1990 and 1994 were in many ways reactionary affairs. Particularly in 1990, Republicans and Democrats alike were running against the memory of former governor Michael Dukakis, who was saddled with the blame for a devastating state recession in the 1980s. Running for reelection in 1994, then-governor Bill Weld was still using Dukakis as a foil, while his Democratic opponents assailed his conservative record.

The 1998 election, however, brings something of a clean slate. The Dukakis demons have been exorcised, and the economy is on fire. Bill Weld is gone. Acting Governor Paul Cellucci, the favorite to win the Republican primary, may have inherited the Weld legacy, but key Weld-era issues such as welfare and taxes have been settled in the public's mind. ($1 billion in tax cuts passed this summer by the legislature, for instance, seems to have largely blunted taxes -- often a defining issue in governor's elections -- as a campaign issue this year. So has the fact that four of five candidates agree on a $1.2 billion state income tax cut.)

A bland crop of personalities hasn't helped fire up the electorate for this race. Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, the heavy favorite to win the Democratic primary, recently joked that Cellucci owed royalties to Jerry Seinfeld because "if there was ever a show about nothing, it's the Cellucci administration." Well, some people might say the same about the governor's race to date.

As in the Eighth District race, education has dominated this campaign. The issue caught fire in June after 59 percent of would-be teachers failed a state certification test. In the short term, the debacle, which caused House Speaker Tom Finneran to brand the flunkers "idiots," had the candidates scrambling to call for tougher teacher standards. But education had long been a key issue statewide.

Voters say education is their number-one concern in the governor's race, and the candidates have responded. Harshbarger has proposed $163 million in new education spending. His Democratic opponent, former state senator Patricia McGovern, has trumped him with a proposed $1.2 billion loan fund. Less inclined to spend, Cellucci and his Republican opponent, state treasurer Joe Malone, extol the promise of charter schools, pledging to expand their numbers far beyond the current cap of 50.

(McGovern likes charters, too, although she'd wait to expand them. Harshbarger and former congressman Brian Donnelly are warier.)

Nothing may be more illustrative than the candidates' attempts to demonstrate their commitment to education through a kind of kind of teacher-hiring arms race. In January Cellucci proposed hiring 4000 new teachers -- an arbitrary number that appears to have been cooked up by a political consultant -- but then didn't include enough money in his budget to do so. Harshbarger seized the opportunity and, using the same arbitrary number, promised he'd actually fund the 4000. Then came Pat McGovern with her proposal: 35,000 new teachers over 10 years. (God forbid Cellucci should develop the atomic bomb.)

More impressive is the attention Harshbarger and McGovern have paid to an issue that doesn't even show up on most polls: worker training. This spring, Reinventing Government guru David Osborne called it "the most important issue for the future of this state."

Job training is a favorite policy prescription of Democrats, like former labor secretary Robert Reich, who decry the country's inequality of wealth. The question is how to keep low-skilled workers from being left in the dust by a changing, increasingly high-tech economy. The answer offered is that government can help train workers for better, higher-paying jobs. That way, the idea goes, their wages will rise and a larger pool of skilled laborers will help the economy grow. In theory, at least, the retraining solution achieves that dream calculus of being good for both workers and business.

Pat McGovern has proposed spending another $152 million on adult basic education and creating new savings accounts for job-training programs. Harshbarger offers a more modest combination of tax credits and spending. It would be encouraging to see Massachusetts take the lead on an issue national Democrats have recently neglected.

A moment of prosperity has also allowed the candidates to confront the fact that some 700,000 people in Massachusetts lack health insurance. In contrast to the universal-coverage rhetoric in the Eighth District race, these candidates prefer incremental steps. Harshbarger, for instance, would extend state Medicaid coverage to 100,000 more people and use money from a settlement with tobacco companies to insure another 100,000. Pat McGovern would use similar tactics and more spending to cover a total of 385,000 people. The Cellucci administration is already using Medicaid and cigarette-tax dollars to subsidize health care costs for employees and businesses. Joe Malone, meanwhile, has been quiet on the issue.

Finally, the candidates are proposing to look inward with some ideas for government innovation. Reforming the bureaucracy can bring great rewards: tax dollars saved, public trust renewed. Joe Malone has adopted this theme, even brandishing the slogan "Don't make government bigger -- make it better." He wants to infuse Beacon Hill with smarter, more creative thinkers from academia and the private sector. Unfortunately, Malone's flair for shallow political stunts and his choice of a lightweight running mate, former talk-radio host Janet Jeghelian, makes it hard to take him seriously. What's more, Malone's pledge to prevent the state budget from growing faster than the inflation rate is a foolishly rigid idea that could require huge budget cuts as the economy grows -- hardly the flexible thinking of a true innovator.

Harshbarger, meanwhile, has shown an interest in cutting-edge techniques. He would create incentives for state budget managers to save money, fighting that ancient and wasteful agency practice of spending dollars just because they're there. Harshbarger claims $100 million can be saved this way. That's debatable. But the claim sufficiently impressed Pat McGovern that she tucked the idea into her own platform.

For his part, as Weld's lieutenant governor, Paul Cellucci proposed a sweeping reorganization of state government that promised to save almost $700 million. The plan never got off the ground, and Cellucci now says there's no "appetite" for it on Beacon Hill.

Attorney General

The Democratic primary race between state senator Lois Pines (D-Newton) and Middlesex DA Tom Reilly may not involve many nuanced, long-term issues; the nature of the office prohibits such broad policymaking. But this race does offer a clear choice.

Reilly, star of the Louise Woodward trial, is a humorless, no-bullshit prosecutor who supports the death penalty. To him, the AG should be a crime-fighting supercop with a hands-off regulatory approach. Pines couldn't see things more differently. A Beacon Hill veteran known for fighting consumer battles, she's been endorsed by Ralph Nader and opposes the death penalty. Pines says she'd be an activist AG who would use her powers to continue her liberal crusades against Big Tobacco, corporate polluters, and other villains. (Republican candidate Brad Bailey has no primary opponent.)

The Democrats' two visions manifest themselves most clearly on the issue of health care. Pines would impose a moratorium on the creation of for-profit hospitals in the state, and she would push aggressively for tighter state regulation of health care. Reilly has said the HMO issue should be left to the legislature.

Unfortunately, this clear, substantive contrast could be lost in the bilious and hateful campaign Pines and Reilly have been running. Reilly has tarred Pines as a head case who intimidates his donors; Pines implies that Reilly's acceptance of lobbyist contributions means he's in the corporate tank.

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Other examples of good ideas abound in this campaign season. Candidates in several races, including the Middlesex district attorney's contest, have latched on to new crime-fighting ideas, including probation reforms that would include closer supervision of criminals and drug testing for parolees. Shannon O'Brien, a former state senator who will win the Democratic nomination for treasurer unopposed, envisions new activist uses for the office such as targeting state pension investments to help create new jobs in the state.

And that good old Massachusetts Democratic moxie is alive and well in the primary race for lieutenant governor, where Watertown state senator Warren Tolman and Governor's Councilor Dorothy Kelly Gay of Somerville flog lefty issues such as the minimum wage and affordable housing. Kelly Gay, in particular, has spoken out on issues that, even in an election year of substance, have been pushed aside by the rightward trend of modern politics. Perhaps more than any other statewide or congressional candidate, Kelly Gay has decried child hunger and homelessness in Massachusetts. She'll likely lose to Tolman, a savvy and experienced rising star, but she will have run a noble campaign.

Likewise Brian Donnelly, who is sure to be dashed on the primary-day rocks on September 15. Donnelly's campaign for governor never gained any momentum and rarely made news. But his emphasis on urban issues and his unwillingness to adopt trendy tax cuts shouldn't be forgotten.

As all these campaigns enter their frenzied final days, personal attacks and political sideshows will inevitably distract voters from the underlying issues. Of course, there's more to elections than issues -- people must determine whether a candidate is sane or smart or honest enough to do the job. But even if they aren't the stuff of 30-second TV ads or quick-hit newspaper stories, ideas are what will most influence the future of the state and the country. The 1998 election is full of them. On September 15, you can let the candidates know what you think.

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