E-Mail This Article to a Friend Putting faces to the races Republicans will soon reveal the challengers they hope will make good on Romney’s drive for seats on Beacon Hill BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

AFTER MONTHS OF talking about gaining seats in the state legislature in the 2004 elections, the Massachusetts Republican Party finally expects to announce "several" candidates for state office by the end of September, according to Dominick Ianno, the Mass GOP’s executive director.

The state party has been vetting "more than a hundred" interested potential candidates, Ianno says, to improve upon the paltry 78 candidates the party put forward in 200 state legislative races in 2002. But aside from quantity, the GOP is hoping to improve on the quality of its candidates so that it can, perhaps, actually gain seats.

"The Republicans have not put up as strong candidates as they should have in the past, and I’m not blameless," says Brian Lees, Senate minority leader. In fact, Lees admits, since just about any Republican can breeze unopposed through the primary, the party often finds itself running ultraconservatives who have no chance to win, or first-timers whose energy for campaigning wears out months before the general election.

But this time around something is different — namely, Governor Mitt Romney (see "Party Boy," News and Features, February 27). Where former governors William Weld and Jane Swift showed little interest in helping the state party, and Paul Cellucci lacked the popularity to accomplish much — though he tried — Romney may have both the will and the means to get more Republicans elected to the state legislature. "Romney has really energized the party," says Lees. "With Governor Romney committed to building the statewide party, it’s a real sea change from the last number of years."

Romney came into office talking about building up the state GOP, but observers, including Lees, say that it was difficult to judge how serious he was until after this year’s budget battle, when the veto-proof Democratic majority in both chambers denied the governor many of his desired cuts and reforms. Since then, Romney has shown a willingness to put his own political capital on the line to get elected the Republican legislators he needs to pass his agenda. For example, with the governor’s help, the Mass GOP has already raised $800,000 this year, far more than in previous non-election years. (In 2001, by contrast, the state party’s receipts totaled just $79,530, according to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance.) Romney has put members of his gubernatorial campaign team into key party positions, including Ianno, who served as his campaign’s research director. Cindy Faulkner, another Romney campaign staffer, became Mass GOP finance director in March, although she recently left. In May, both Romney and Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey personally appeared on the campaign trail with candidate Matt Sisk, who came 429 votes shy of picking up Braintree’s House seat in a special election following Joseph Sullivan’s death, a contest eventually won by Democrat Joseph Driscoll. In August, the state party moved its headquarters from Wakefield to Boston (after a few months’ stopover at the former Romney-Healey campaign headquarters in Cambridge), a move Ianno says Romney pushed for to facilitate his personal involvement — and made possible by placing four members of his own staff in the new North End office so that a quarter of the roughly $5000 monthly rent could come out of Romney-Healey campaign funds. In fact, both Romney and Healey have been in and out of the office, making phone calls to encourage prospective candidates, says Alex Dunn, Romney’s deputy chief of staff, who works out of the new location. Romney has appeared at several regional Republican events recently, according to Dunn, and last week both Romney and Healey mingled with at least a dozen potential legislative candidates at an office-opening party. And in early October they will both appear in Waltham at the fall conference of the Association of Massachusetts Republican Town & City Committee Chairmen.

The event will be a coming-out party for GOP candidates, and will double as a fundraiser to launch their campaigns. Democratic incumbents are watching with great interest, as well as a little trepidation. "I would not underestimate this challenge," says Democratic analyst Mary Anne Marsh.

THE DEMOCRATS seem all too happy to take on Romney and the Republicans. "Look, we all know he wants to be president," said one Democratic legislative aide, who requested anonymity. "He wants to demonstrate his strength by winning seats in a traditionally Democratic state. We’d love to embarrass him."

"If he wants to have a war, we’ll have it," adds Massachusetts Democratic State Committee chair Philip Johnston. "I think they’re making a major political miscalculation."

Johnston plans to play offense as well as defense. "I’m recruiting candidates to run against their incumbents," he says, although he has no names to offer to date and won’t specify which Republicans he thinks can be beaten. Last year, the six Republican senators all won re-election handily, or unopposed. Potentially vulnerable members of the House, based on their 2002 margins of victory, include Jeffrey Perry of Sandwich, Susan Gifford of Wareham, Daniel Webster of Hanson, and Lewis Evangelidis of Worcester.

Romney’s challenge, Johnston says, serves to galvanize both parties’ bases — and since the Democrats have a much bigger, deeper base, that plays right into their hands. Johnston expects boosts in fundraising, grassroots organizing, and volunteering as a direct result of Romney’s inserting himself into the legislative race.

"That’s folly," says Marsh of Johnston’s theory. She points to a number of warning signs for the Democrats: Romney’s victory; the stunning 45 percent "yes" vote on the anti-tax question-one initiative; strong GOP fundraising both this year and during Romney’s campaign; Republican infrastructure investment (Ianno confirms that, since moving into its new office, the state party has purchased a couple of computers, some software, and a new server, and has also developed candidate manuals and voter data); a vastly improved Republican get-out-the-vote mechanism; and a recent University of Massachusetts poll showing that Romney’s approval rating has risen to 63 percent.

Bay State Democrats, Marsh charges, have failed to take voter disenchantment seriously, whether it turns up as support for a Robert Reich or a Howard Dean, or as votes for initiatives like English-immersion public education or eliminating the income tax. "Look what happened in California," she says. "The Democratic Party didn’t take the recall seriously, and now they’re in trouble."

The Democrats, she says, need to do more than gear up their base for electoral battle; they need to provide these disaffected middle-class voters with a coherent message about what they plan to do for the state’s economy. "If you approach this as a way to embarrass Mitt Romney, you can lose that and a lot of seats with it," she warns.

That’s if the Republicans can find serious candidates. The Bay State’s string of Republican governors has done little to build a farm team of local officeholders to draw from. "Certainly the party has, over the past 10 years, at least at the state level, not done the greatest job developing quality candidates," Dunn concedes.

As a result, expect many of the Republican candidates to come, as Romney did, from non-political vocations. Ianno says that he has spoken with lawyers, teachers, insurance salesmen, bankers, and stay-at-home spouses interested in running.

BACK IN 1991, the state GOP briefly broke the veto-proof super-majority barrier with 16 state senators. They desperately want to do it again, but they’re starting out with just six seats. The minority party needs 14 of the Senate’s 40 members to keep the majority from having two-thirds of the votes. Seats in the House are easier to win — especially with candidates not well-known beyond their local towns — but there the Republicans have just 23 of 160; they would need to gain 31 seats to reach the 54 necessary to block veto overrides, a near-impossible task. A double-digit shift in either direction hasn’t come about since Weld took office.

Marsh predicts that the Republicans are going to focus on the Senate, where they need eight new members to block the Democrats’ veto-proof majority. It’s still a mighty challenge, but more realistic. Although Ianno doesn’t want to tip his hand yet, Democrats expect challenges to senators from the suburban Route 128/I-495 corridor (Steven Baddour of Methuen, Susan Fargo of Lincoln, Pamela Resor of Acton, Susan Tucker of Andover, David Magnani of Ashland) and the Cape (Robert O’Leary of Barnstable, Therese Murray of Plymouth). "They all have to assume they are vulnerable," says Marsh. (Johnston charges that the Republicans also will try to "purge the legislature" of "progressive females," possibly including Harriette Chandler of Worcester and Cheryl Jacques of Needham.)

Ianno has identified 21 Senate districts, along with 68 in the House, with Democratic incumbents that were nonetheless won by Romney in 2002. He’s also got a list of 25 senators and 81 representatives who voted for the law that amended — or watered down, in Ianno’s view — the English-immersion law passed by popular initiative last year. The GOP, he says, will make the way Democrats and their special-interest groups impede the people’s will the key issue of the campaign. Republicans are even applying that message to what they consider the Democrats’ haughty reaction to Romney’s desire to gain Republican seats. "Democrats seem to be appalled that there would be people energizing to run against them for House or Senate," says Dunn.

Whether the Dems are "appalled" by this challenge is unclear. But GOP operatives agree that, even if they fail to crack the Dems’ veto-proof majority, a couple of wins could make a difference psychologically. "Most of the senators have never seen anyone lose a seat," Lees says. "Any change will indicate to the senators that they have to represent their district."

Johnston calls that "instilling fear in the hearts of other progressives." If the Mass GOP shows that it can knock off targeted senators who lean too far left, the theory goes, Romney can pressure Democrats into breaking party ranks on crucial votes.

First, however, the GOP will have to bring forth candidates who instill a little fear in the incumbents. That may begin any day now.

David S. Bernstein can be reached at dbernstein[a]phx.com