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How will Somerville mayor Mike Capuano fare in Congress? Plus, what's next for the Eighth District losers? And a roundup of primary results.

Primary '98 by Michael Crowley

Mike Capuano always argued, as his campaign slogan put it, that "The Difference Is Results."

The scrappy Somerville mayor was talking about his achievements in his hometown, where he claims to have rejuvenated the public schools. But in the end, that slogan also summed up Capuano's campaign to succeed Representative Joe Kennedy (D-Brighton) in Congress next January.

For most of the race, the thick-chested Capuano never seemed to prevail in any of the categories by which the 10-candidate Democratic primary field was typically assessed: polls, fundraising, endorsements, advertising, editorial opinion, overall buzz. Capuano never made much of a story for the press. He wasn't a woman, a millionaire, a New Democrat, or an accused drunk, and he never discussed his underwear with Howard Stern on live radio.

But after six months of campaigning following Joe Kennedy's announcement of his retirement, Capuano was the one who got results. For months, people underestimated the strength of his City Hall political machine and his base of support in Somerville. By early September, when his rivals started paying attention to his swelling poll numbers, it was too late. Capuano cranked his "street campaign" into gear and turned out the voters, and on Tuesday night he won. (Capuano still has to face two independents and one Republican on the November ballot, but he's probably more concerned about alien abduction than about losing to any of those little-knowns).

Let the races begin Primary winners look to November The Eighth District race was a mystery until the final ballots were counted on Tuesday night, but the results of the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial primaries haven't been in serious doubt for months. Now voters can look forward to a general-election fight between Democratic attorney general Scott Harshbarger and Republican acting governor Paul Cellucci, two men who make cardboard boxes seem dynamic and unpredictable by comparison. One might assume that the vicious primary challenge Cellucci faced from state treasurer Joe Malone weakened the governor even further. On the contrary, Malone accomplished an amazing feat: he actually made Cellucci a sympathetic figure. There's no question that Malone did Harshbarger many favors with his summer carpet-bombing of Cellucci. Malone reminded the electorate of the acting governor's highly suspicious $700,000 personal debt, for instance. And even though it took a slimily obtained credit-card report, Malone established that Cellucci's recent assurances that he's been reducing his debt were misleading. (Maybe Cellucci can argue that if the president can lie to conceal embarrassing personal indiscretions, so can he.) Nevertheless, Cellucci responded well to Malone's onslaught of attacks. In debates, he kept his cool, answered questions with more smarts and detail than he has typically shown in a month of press conferences, and fired back reasonable shots at Malone's record and ethics. Even if he exaggerated his accomplishments (taking credit for a major tax cut designed by the legislature, for instance), Cellucci seemed more confident and, well, gubernatorial than he has since taking office. Malone, by contrast, defiled his own good reputation. The treasurer likes to define himself in contrast to the state's political establishment, but in desperation he employs its own worst tactics: illegally obtaining credit records, running laughably simplistic political ads calling Cellucci a liberal, promising to reform government but refusing to cite any specifics. The man who earned praise for running a clean 1988 Senate challenge against Ted Kennedy has revealed himself to be little more than another hollow creature of ambition. On the Democratic side, Harshbarger's failed challengers -- former state senator Patricia McGovern and former congressman Brian Donnelly -- can walk away with their heads held high. McGovern never ran as vigorous a campaign as her admirers would have liked, but she never rolled over, either. Donnelly was never a serious factor in the race, but he was self-aware and jovial enough to save his reputation. "In a weird way, he came out stronger than he came in," says one supporter. The stakes may be lower for statewide races further down the ticket, but the personalities involved promise to make these contests more interesting. The raging ambition and ultraliberal credentials of former state senator Lois Pines (D-Newton) weren't enough to carry her past Middlesex County DA Tom Reilly in the Democratic primary for attorney general. Reilly's narrower, more prosecutorial vision of the office triumphed over Pines's Naderite activism, and his flurry of late attack ads didn't hurt, either. Reilly now heads for a general election fight against Republican Brad Bailey, a former Middlesex County sheriff (who must feel like he's gotten off on the wrong foot: Bailey would do better contrasting his law-and-order credentials with Pines's record than trying to distinguish himself from the straightlaced Reilly). The race for lieutenant governor, meanwhile, pits state senator Warren Tolman (D-Watertown) -- an accomplished, smart, and enthusiastic legislator perhaps best known for a Blues Brothers-inspired campaign ad -- against former state senator Jane Swift (R-North Adams), who is due to have a baby more or less on Election Day. Tolman ought to be able to rock Swift's world on substance, but he may find it politically difficult to be too aggressive against a pregnant opponent. Colorful races that required no primary because each party's candidates were unopposed will now begin to develop as well. Squinty-eyed Democratic auditor Joe DeNucci faces an unusually feisty challenge from former state consumer affairs chief Mike Duffy, who is seeking to become the first openly gay candidate elected to a statewide office. Finally, a touchy-feely woman and a pinstriped businessman will clash when former Democratic state senator Shannon O'Brien makes her second bid for treasurer against Republican Bain & Company executive Bob McGinn. Can these lower-ticket affairs save us from the tedium of a Harshbarger-Cellucci matchup? Can anything inject life into a governor's race sure to be dominated by Harshbarger's seemingly endless bromides about "moving working families forward" and the acting governor's monotonal pap about the Weld-Cellucci record? We may have to find out the hard way.

National observers of this race -- and there are plenty, given that the Eighth District seat has been occupied by the likes of John F. Kennedy and Tip O'Neill -- will be puzzled by Capuano's win. A district known for its Cambridge academic elites and weepy liberal activists isn't supposed to elect a tough-talking, working-class Italian with a crooked nose.

But, in fact, Capuano is an appropriate face for what is at its core a blue-collar district where urban populism, not trendy issues activism, wins votes -- as evidenced by the combined support for Capuano and former Boston mayor Ray Flynn, two men who traffic in the same political symbolism. Capuano is the working stiff with a rough Boston accent. He's the guy who reads the Herald -- the paper that endorsed him. He's the guy who listens to talk-radio host Howie Carr -- who also endorsed him on-air the day before the primary. Capuano says he has no political hero; he is inspired by the ordinary working man.

"I'm just a regular guy," Capuano told New England Cable News with a shrug of his shoulders on Tuesday, shortly after declaring his victory "pretty goddamned unbelievable."

Now the regular guy must try to get results in Washington, where he will find himself transformed from a revered local power broker into a junior member of the minority party, with little clout. Indeed, Capuano's was among the least ambitious platforms in the race. He identified top-priority issues -- education, Social Security, affordable housing -- but offered no sweeping proposals to deal with any of them. He scoffed when his opponents called for huge cuts in the Pentagon budget or promised new spending programs costing billions of dollars. "We're not running for king!" he would exclaim in exasperation. Capuano preferred to talk about his record as mayor -- the vaunted "results" -- but never fully explained how his micromanagement at City Hall would translate to the federal level.

It may be, however, that what the Eighth District needs at this moment of Republican dominance is not a butt-kicking ideologue, but somebody who can deal with the devil. Seeing Marjorie Clapprood tell off countless Republicans on the House floor might have made voters feel good -- but would it have been worth new cuts in Big Dig funding as punishment?

Capuano, by contrast, seems well suited to working with his Republican colleagues. He took a few digs at Newt Gingrich, but he never ran a fire-and-brimstone, GOP-bashing campaign. Ideological idealism aside, Capuano may be the candidate best equipped to walk into a back room with a Southern GOP committee chairman and come out with a billion dollars for the Big Dig. In the trenches of city politics, you don't learn to make glossy speeches but to extract concessions like molars.

Capuano isn't nearly as conservative on social issues as his urban-populist profile might suggest. He supports the right of gays and lesbians to marry. He is pro-choice, and while he finds so-called partial birth abortions hideous, he says that as long as late-term abortions are legal, politicians shouldn't tell doctors how to perform them. Unlike Joe Kennedy, he opposes the death penalty and opposes a constitutional ban on flag burning.

No, the biggest questions about Capuano have to do with his personal style. Although he has been a popular mayor overall, Capuano's short fuse and headstrong manner have left him with no shortage of strident critics. As his election became increasingly likely this week, for instance, a group of Somerville activists calling themselves "Somerville Citizens for Effective Government" distributed fliers and e-mails trashing their mayor. "Those of us who have lived in Somerville in the past nine years know a very different mayor from the one portrayed in the Herald and on TV," the e-mail complains. (On Tuesday, several rivals also accused Capuano of slimy campaign tactics.)

In fact, late in the campaign, venture capitalist Chris Gabrieli raised some serious questions about Capuano's claims to have worked magic in the Somerville schools. By the end of the race, Gabrieli was almost entirely consumed with his efforts to depict Capuano as a fraud. Although Capuano brags that Somerville's SAT scores are rising, for example, Gabrieli produced results showing that during Capuano's tenure as mayor the scores have dropped about 40 points.

And when Gabrieli's barbs began to stick in Capuano's craw, the mayor didn't exactly shrug off the criticism. Instead, he got personal, telling the Boston Globe that Gabrieli "didn't have the courage to look me in the eye and debate me. I wish he'd been man enough." Things got so bad that when the two ran into one another a couple of days later they had a tense, toe-to-toe confrontation that seemed to stop just short of fisticuffs. As Capuano told one Somerville audience late in the campaign, "sometimes I'm a little too strong."

Will temperament prove to be a limitation for Congressman Capuano? Ironically, there's another leading Boston politician known for his hot head: Joe Kennedy. Kennedy's detractors say it sometimes kept him from being an effective legislator; his constituents, however, seem to think he's done a pretty good job.

There's no way to know yet whether this unfamiliar figure out of insular Somerville can live up to the strong record of achievement Kennedy will leave behind him. Capuano now faces tough standards for success and failure. And the difference between the two, as he should know better than anyone, will be results.

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The losers, of course, must now face the agony of defeat. But worse, they've got to answer what for many of them is a difficult question: what next? For the most part, the also-rans of the Eighth District hardly promise to be leaders of the next millennium. But a few of them may yet shape the future of Boston politics.

Perhaps the most intriguing question is what will become of Chris Gabrieli. Gabrieli was often derided as a millionaire interloper trying to "buy the election." But although he's about $5 million poorer, Gabrieli showed intellect and original thinking in a political world badly lacking in both. One hopes he will run again, though it's hard to foresee what office he would seek. Unless Capuano becomes an instant embarrassment, it will seem unsporting to challenge him in 2000 or even 2002. Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry won't being going anywhere soon -- and Joe Kennedy undoubtedly has dibs on whichever seat opens up first. And Gabrieli's rich-guy image and lack of a political base make a run for Boston mayor all but unthinkable.

Still, it would be a shame if Gabrieli were to abandon his articulate calls for decisive education reform. One possibility for his future is an appointment to the Boston School Committee, if Mayor Tom Menino were willing. Gabrieli might also be a good fit in the vacant post of state education commissioner (although he may be too liberal for Paul Cellucci and too conservative for Scott Harshbarger). If nothing official pans out, Gabrieli would still have enough money and name recognition to be an influential voice in civic affairs. After all, Gabrieli always insisted he was running not for the office but to improve public policy; there's no reason he can't do so as a private citizen.

He fared dismally on Tuesday, but Boston city councilor Tom Keane, like Gabrieli, is an unusually intelligent pol with a dignified manner. But while Gabrieli's future in politics is uncertain, Keane is certain to press ahead with a promising career -- although he must figure out where, exactly, to go from here. Clearly, the city council is too irrelevant and small-minded to hold Keane's interest any longer. But if not the council, then what? Like Gabrieli, Keane has a surplus of good ideas about how to continue Boston's comeback, fix its schools, and reclaim its estranged middle class. He, too, could make invaluable contributions to the city's political debate -- ideally, from City Hall.

"He'd be a great mayor," says one close Keane supporter. "We've run a campaign that increases his visibility and increases his viability. We have intentionally run a very clean, smooth, issue-oriented campaign. . . . He's uniquely positioned to be around for a long time."

It's an open question, though, whether Keane could win a Boston mayoral election, an almost tribal ritual in which ability counts less than having allies in high-voter-turnout neighborhoods. Keane would likely face not only an incumbent Mayor Menino (who recently backed away from his promise to serve just two terms), but other heavies as well, including city councilor Peggy Davis-Mullen, who has slowly been building a citywide base; Suffolk County DA Ralph Martin; and former city councilor John Nucci.

George Bachrach has now failed in two campaigns for this seat and one for governor -- that's three strikes. He poured more than $350,000 of his own money into this campaign, so look for Bachrach to continue making money at the edges of politics through law, lobbying, and political fundraising. He also has his job as CEO of a telemarketing firm to fall back on.

Marjorie Clapprood, by contrast, finishes this campaign the way she began it: unemployed. Clapprood might be thinking about a return to her talk-radio career, but she ended the race with such dismal ratings that offers might be hard to come by. Barring a Harshbarger administration appointment, Clapprood might become a freelance public advocate for liberal causes such as the rights of women, children, and gays. One sympathizer says she could become a local "Jesse Jackson figure."

Ray Flynn might plausibly run for South Boston's congressional seat should the bionic Representative Joe Moakley ever retire. But Flynn has become such an archetypal has-been that even his Southie home may not grant him new political life. And as one local politico puts it, "South Boston is not the dominant part of that district anymore. It's a South Shore seat now." Flynn's best bet would be to seek some kind of employment with the Catholic archdiocese, perhaps as a liaison between the church and the city.

Alex Rodriguez reportedly is interested in becoming the Boston Globe's next ombudsman. But seriously, folks: more likely, he will assume some kind of leadership role as a South End activist, possibly pursuing his interest in affordable housing.

Susan Tracy distinguished herself as sincere, compassionate, and committed, but perhaps not suited for the pressures of public office. She'd make a good appointee in a Harshbarger administration, especially in a human services-related job (one observer notes that Tracy's close friendship with Tom Finneran could make her a good liaison between Harshbarger and the sometimes obstinate House Speaker). Likewise, Tracy would be a useful hand at Boston City Hall, where she has a friend in Mayor Menino.

Charles Yancey's meaningless candidacy confirmed, as the Globe's Brian Mooney aptly put it last week, that Yancey is a "Boston city councilor for life."

The biggest wild card is the future of John O'Connor, who has transformed himself from a little-known activist into a high-profile political personality. O'Connor's immediate focus will be his ongoing campaign to repeal the November 1997 deregulation of the state's electric-power industry, which he says screws consumers and is a missed chance at environmental reforms. However, insiders confess to having little idea what O'Connor's next act will be. While he's established himself as having fine pro-consumer and pro-environment credentials (he was, after all, endorsed by Ralph Nader), his unruly personality makes it hard to imagine him holding major office. One possibility would be for O'Connor, a popular figure within the district's black community, to devote himself to increasing the political engagement of Boston's minority neighborhoods.

And now, let us pray that we never go through a 10-candidate campaign again. Amen.

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Barring a major scandal, Capuano's election to Congress will be easily ratified on November 3. But he does face two opponents in the general election ballot: Independent Anthony Schinella and Republican Phil Hyde. Neither of his opponents poses an electoral threat. Hyde is a monotonal eccentric who has campaigned on a platform of "timesizing" that would shorten the work week. Schinella is a more significant presence. A talk-radio host and failed Boston City Council candidate in 1997, he is an economic populist and social libertarian with an obsessive hatred for the Democratic Party's internationalist wing (Schinella says he's read the full texts of the NAFTA and GATT agreements -- in disgust, of course).

With Capuano's defeat of Ray Flynn, Schinella has missed his chance to be immortalized as the vehicle for a desperate general-election stop-Ray movement. However, Schinella could be a real PR irritation to Capuano between now and November. He suggests that the press and the public never took a close enough look at Capuano before the primary, and he seems intent on enthusiastically playing the role of gadfly. "I'm not surprised Mike Capuano won," Schinella matter-of-factly declared on Tuesday night. "He has Somerville tied up like it's a mob town. Everybody knows it." For Mike Capuano, the next few weeks of Anthony Schinella could be like one of those long nights in bed with a mosquito buzzing past your ear: ultimately harmless, but absolutely maddening.

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