E-Mail This Article to a Friend In the mix (continued)
	Related links   Michael Capuano's home page Stephen Lynch's home page Web sites for the congressmen representing Massachusetts’s Eighth and Ninth Districts OnTheIssues.org synopsis of Governor Mitt Romney’s stands on abortion Basic summary of Romney’s previously held abortion positions. Deborah Goldberg 2006 The would-be Democratic lieutenant governor’s campaign site.

Lynch’s intentions are more opaque. Maybe he wants to be governor; maybe he wants to run for the Senate in a few years, or just to boost his name recognition. While Capuano would pull voters from Patrick, Lynch — who is pro-life and prefers civil unions to gay marriage — would chip away at Reilly’s support among moderates and conservatives. As with Capuano, Lynch’s congressional district would be a natural base, but his conservative leanings and labor background would help him in other parts of the state. "Lynch has a real base, and it’s extensible," says another Democrat. "You’ll find pockets of old-labor, conservative Democrats in Springfield and Holyoke and Lawrence and Lowell." And Kennedy? Again, maybe he wants to be governor. Or maybe he’s just using his celebrity to push a program he believes would help the state.

Both congressmen would face the same challenge if they run: money, or the lack of it. Because federal funds can’t be used for state races, Capuano and Lynch would have to hustle to make up for lost time. Since campaign-finance law limits individuals to one $500 donation per candidate per year, each would probably have to declare by September to effectively squeeze supporters before the end of the year. Kennedy, of course, is a different story: given his family’s name and wealth, the ex-congressman could change his mind early next year and immediately become the front-runner.

Is it all so much idle chatter? "Joe said [in January] that he has no interest in running for governor in 2006, and nothing’s different," says a Kennedy spokesperson. Also through a spokesperson, Lynch emphasized that it would be difficult to leave Washington; still, he refused to shut the door entirely, calling a gubernatorial run "highly unlikely." Alison Mills, a spokesperson for Capuano, was similarly cagey. "I can tell you he isn’t planning a run for governor," Mills said of her boss. "But in politics, you never say never."

Mitt Romney, abortion cipher

Say this for Governor Romney: he’s willing to change his mind. Last week, in a much-discussed article in USA Today, Romney said he is "in a different place" on the question of abortion than he was when he ran against Ted Kennedy in 1994. Maybe it’s a cynical ploy to bolster his conservative credentials for a 2008 presidential run; maybe it’s a genuine shift that comes on the heels of much soul-searching; maybe it’s some combination of the two. Whatever. Good for Romney. If more public figures treated changes of heart as signs of growth rather than weakness, politics would be better for it.

Unfortunately, Romney won’t tell us about the new place he’s in, or how he happened to get there. Since the USA Today interview, Romney and his spokesperson, Julie Teer, have refused to elaborate on the specifics of his current position. Furthermore, Romney’s choice of language is hardly inspiring: instead of actually saying that he changed his mind, the governor chose a more passive construction, one that absolves him of personal responsibility and sounds like a bad break-up line.

Maybe trying to make sense of his own slippery comments on abortion in the past have convinced Romney of the wisdom of silence. In 1994, he cast himself as an abortion-rights supporter during the aforementioned Senate run. In 2001, in a letter to the Salt Lake Tribune, he rejected the pro-choice label. And then, in the 2002 gubernatorial election, Romney worked to assure abortion-rights supporters that any conservative shift on the issue had been greatly exaggerated — which helped him in his Republican-primary campaign against acting governor Jane Swift and his general election campaign against Treasurer Shannon O’Brien, both of whom were staunchly pro-choice. "When Mitt Romney ran [in 2002], he said he had evolved," recalls Melissa Kogut, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts. "He was fairly assertive about it. He said, You can trust me; I’m going to advocate for reproductive choice in Massachusetts."

So what does Romney do now? Larry Sabato, the oft-quoted University of Virginia political scientist, says Romney needs to explain himself in much greater detail to convince the Republican primary voters he seems intent on courting in three years. Given Romney’s previous comments, Sabato argues, "there’s no way he can win on this issue. What he has to do is make sure that he’s an acceptable choice. He has to convince them that he’s at least basically pro-life, that he’s renounced his wayward past.... This has to be the beginning, because if he’s in a different place now, why couldn’t he be in a third place two weeks from now? How did he get there, and how real is it?"

Good questions, those. And if Romney decides the road to the White House leads through the 2006 Massachusetts governor’s election, Massachusetts voters of all political stripes — whether they support or oppose legalized abortion — will want some answers as well.

Head start

The caveat is obvious: it’s still early. Even so, the slate of supporters assembled by Democrat Deborah Goldberg, the former Brookline selectman and Stop & Shop heir who is running for lieutenant governor, is truly impressive. The host committee for Goldberg’s June 14 fundraiser includes Congressman Barney Frank; current state representatives Ruth Balser, Stephen Kulik, Frank Smizik, and Marie St. Fleur; Partnership head Benaree Wiley; former Kevin White–administration heavyweight Micho Spring; and local philanthropist and corporate bigwig Jack Connors Jr.

Again, the race has just begun: a well-known politician like State Senator Mark Montigny could still jump in, and Goldberg’s current competitors, Andrea Silbert and Sam Kelley, could line up some powerful allies of their own. But if Goldberg continues at this clip (as of April 31, she had $77,000 in the bank, compared to Silbert’s $39,000 and Kelley’s $3000), her campaign will be hard to stop.

Adam Reilly can be reached at areilly[a]phx.com