E-Mail This Article to a Friend The price of loyalty Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey’s dilemma: Serve Mitt Romney, or serve herself? BY ADAM REILLY

IT WAS SMART policy and bad politics. Last month, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey suggested that elderly homeowners plagued by hefty property taxes rethink their plight. Tax relief might not be the answer, Healey told a reporter; instead, seniors could move to smaller homes in the center of town. Their property taxes would drop, and they’d have easy access to shopping and public transportation. Their homes could then be purchased by young families — which, as an added bonus, would keep that housing on the tax rolls at its full value.

Maybe it was Healey’s use of the Orwellian term "overhoused," which conjured visions of frail octogenarians herded onto buses and shipped to warehouses on the Boston waterfront. Maybe it was the fact that Healey — who lives with her husband and two children in a 5300-square-foot, $2.5 million home in a tony Beverly neighborhood — might be "overhoused" herself. But for whatever reason, most people seemed to miss the clear logic of Healey’s argument. The press pounced: Healey was cold, spoiled, out of touch. Meanwhile, the Romney administration’s defense of its Number Two was rather mild. Healey’s remarks, a Romney spokesperson explained, had simply been misunderstood.

After the brouhaha had run its course, one prominent Democrat cited it as proof that Healey — who’d never held elected office before becoming Romney’s running mate — remains politically immature. "She’s guilty not only of being candid, but also of being a little naive," he said. Another high-profile Democrat speculated that Romney, who has a well-known fascination with "smart growth" strategies, had used Healey to test a controversial policy proposal. "I think she was taking one for the team," the second Democrat said.

Whatever prompted Healey’s remarks, the episode came at a bad time for the LG. Back in 2002, a comparable gaffe would have hampered Romney’s gubernatorial ambitions. Last year, it would have hurt the Republican push to add legislators on Beacon Hill. Today, however, Romney’s own re-election plans are unclear, and Harvard Pilgrim CEO Charlie Baker is already being touted as a successor if Romney exits after one term. If Healey is interested in becoming governor — provided the job opens up — she’s got to step out of Romney’s shadow and establish her own political identity. She has to do it soon. And she needs good press, not bad.

HEALEY’S SITUATION would be different if her predecessor, Jane Swift, had fared better. But anything accomplished by Swift — who became governor when Paul Cellucci was named ambassador to Canada — has long been forgotten. It’s the public-relations disasters that are memorable: Swift using gubernatorial aides to baby-sit her daughter Elizabeth; Swift commandeering a state helicopter to beat traffic on the Mass Pike and get home to her family in Williamstown on Thanksgiving Day; Swift weathering scrutiny of her husband, Chuck Hunt (a thrice-married contractor and stay-at-home dad famous for dropping Elizabeth, the couple’s oldest child, at the State House before going jogging) and her husband’s son (who made his homosexuality public and criticized Swift’s opposition to gay marriage in a Boston Globe article); Swift enduring persistent jokes about her weight; and, finally, Swift being muscled out of the governor’s race when — just six months before the general election — Mitt Romney decided to run.

These stumbles set a dangerous precedent for Healey, dooming her to unflattering comparisons with Swift whenever things got rough. And, sure enough, the knee-jerk knocks against Swift have become knee-jerk knocks against Healey. Conventional wisdom says that Healey, like Swift, is a lightweight. Like Swift, she has an overblown sense of entitlement. (Swift’s helicopter ride probably ended her career; when a state police officer driving Healey used his siren to cut through stalled traffic, the parallel seemed obvious.) And just as Romney pushed Swift out, many see Baker as a lethal threat to whatever gubernatorial hopes Healey may have. "The Romney-Healey administration has problems, as did the Cellucci administration, and that’s what cost Jane Swift," argues one Democrat. "Baker comes out of the private sector. He’s not considered to be a State House person, he’s not connected to the administration. He’d be perfect."

Given Swift’s fate, it’s no surprise that Healey balks at the comparison. "Of course, it’s been frustrating," Healey says. "I think that for men — in any profession — you assume that you’re going to be taken on your own merits, and assumed to be different than your predecessor, even if your predecessor was similar to you demographically. So for a woman to be assumed to be like her predecessor simply because she’s a woman, does get frustrating. And it’s hard not to react to the question after a while." Then, in the next breath, the lieutenant governor plays the diplomat. "I have great respect for any woman who was a first," she adds. "Being the first woman governor in Massachusetts is going to be fraught with difficulty. And my job is much easier as a result of following in her footsteps."

Of course, Healey is hardly an unbiased source. But the Swift-Healey parallel doesn’t hold up. For starters, Swift and Healey have radically different family circumstances — something that, rightly or wrongly, always matters for female politicians. During her time in the State House, Swift endured the trials of a pregnancy with twins while raising her infant daughter; by contrast, Healey’s two children are 13 and 11. Furthermore, while Swift’s family had an almost Faulknerian strangeness, the oddest thing about Healey’s family is its remarkable wealth. (Healey’s husband, Sean, is president and chief executive officer of Affiliated Managers Group, a Beverly-based asset-management firm; in 2004, his salary and stock options reached $3.75 million.) This affluence gives the lieutenant governor critical leverage — the ability to spend millions of dollars of her own money on a future campaign — that Swift didn’t have.

Then there are the poll numbers: while Swift’s favorable ratings plummeted near the end of her time in office, Healey’s numbers seem solid. In a recent Suffolk University poll, for example, nearly twice as many people (34 percent) said they had a favorable opinion of Healey as an unfavorable (18 percent). (The same poll gave Healey the edge in a Romney-less Republican primary: 27 percent preferred the lieutenant governor, 26 percent preferred White House chief of staff Andy Card, and three percent preferred Baker.)

Then again, Swift had something Healey still lacks: she’d won an election on her own. Before Swift became lieutenant governor, she’d been elected to the state Senate (in 1990, at the age of 25). Contrast that with Healey, who — just five years ago — seemed to have failed decisively as a politician. In November 2000, Healey fell short in her second bid for state representative, losing big (60 percent to 36 percent) to incumbent Michael Cahill in the Beverly-based Sixth Essex District. It was Healey’s second trouncing by Cahill in as many years: in 1998, the margin was a whopping 32 percent.

Healey’s ascent began one year later, when she was elected chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party. As the face of the state GOP, Healey had several obvious strengths. She was attractive and personable, a smooth-voiced, articulate Harvard alumna with an affinity for wonkish policy issues. (After getting her PhD in political science and law from Trinity College in Dublin, Healey spent most of a decade researching criminal-justice policy for Cambridge-based Abt Associates.) As a former candidate, she could brief legislative recruits on the tough realities of the campaign trail. She also had a natural talent for selling the idea of Republicanism — for arguing that, far from being the preserve of selfish right-wingers, the GOP is (or should be) a natural home for intelligent voters who want to make society better. And, of course, she was rich, with plenty of money to devote to grassroots Republican activities. When I interviewed Healey for another newspaper a few months into her stint as state-party chair, she spoke as if her days as a candidate were done. "Because I’ve done it twice, I can tell you it’s hard on your family," Healey said. "And personally, it takes a great deal of dedication to put yourself out there for that level of criticism and openness."