Meehan has tried to repair his relationship with labor in recent years; he worked on settling the Raytheon strike, and he walked the picket line with workers at Verizon. But emotions are still raw over his position on trade — a situation made worse by clumsy handling. Last year, when queried by labor leaders (including Sweeney) about his position on Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, Meehan put them off, saying he had not yet made up his mind. Then late one Friday in May, he suddenly called labor leaders to declare his stance; that Saturday’s bulldog edition of the Boston Globe featured a long op-ed by Meehan titled "The Trade Accord with China: Why I Will Vote Yes." Labor leaders felt he had strung them along. Meehan, they believed, couldn’t have written and submitted the piece after he told them where he stood; he must have known his position for some time, they reasoned, and kept it to himself.

Regardless of which representative would have the edge, a Meehan-Tierney race would contrast the strengths and weaknesses of two very different legislators. With his advocacy of campaign-finance reform and penchant for making appearances with Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press, Meehan is a nationally recognized leader on a number of issues. Tierney, by contrast, is a bread-and-butter congressman who is little known outside his district — despite his close relations with labor and other community leaders at home. He gets high marks locally for fighting to get federal aid to study the feasibility of expanding the Blue Line from Revere to Lynn and northward. He also cuts a generally more left-leaning figure than Meehan: in 2000 he filed a bill advocating universal health care, and in 1997 he received a perfect 100 percent rating from the environmentalist League of Conservation Voters.

THE PROSPECT of a bitter primary is quietly prompting some local and national Democrats — notably Dick Gephardt — to worry that the Republicans will exploit the situation. Parts of northern Essex County and Merrimack Valley are home to independents who might be put off by an ugly primary fight, as well as Republicans eager for an opportunity. Republicans, as a general rule, don’t prosper in Massachusetts. But they can succeed when Democrats self-destruct. That’s what got both Blute and Torkildsen elected in the first place. Blute won after Representative Joe Early of Worcester got caught up in the House banking scandal. Torkildsen won after former Peabody mayor Nick Mavroules went to jail in connection with corruption charges in the early 1990s.

Benton, of the Salem Evening News, is already floating a scenario that could give the Democrats fits: he’s raising the possibility that Essex County sheriff Frank Cousins, a Republican, will run. Cousins, who is African-American, has support in both parts of the new Sixth District. "Cousins was one of the GOP’s few success stories in 1998 ... a known quantity in Lawrence, which would be the second-largest city in the reconfigured district, behind Lowell," Benton wrote recently. Boston Globe columnist David Warsh, meanwhile, hinted at a Republican candidacy by retiring General Electric mogul Jack Welch, a Salem native.

"The winner of a Meehan-Tierney primary would be a pretty wounded duck," says Blute. "This is where Jane Swift needs to show some leadership and recruit a candidate."

Even if the Democrats don’t have to worry about a well-financed Republican challenger, the effort expended by both Democratic incumbents could end up hurting them as well as their party. The resources that both Tierney and Meehan will need — if they do, indeed, end up battling each other for the same district — could weaken the Democratic governor’s race in 2002. The energy, attention, and money expended by a Meehan-Tierney race could cut away from the party’s effort to unseat Swift.

Knowing this, Meehan can wait for Birmingham and Finneran to sort out his fate — then pull a fast one. If the two Beacon Hill leaders decide to eliminate the Fifth, Meehan can jump back into the governor’s race as the real "outsider" candidate. One factor that motivated Meehan to get back into the congressional race was the fear that he was letting his district down. But once the district is gone, Meehan becomes a dangerous man. In Massachusetts politics, he’ll have nothing to lose.