IF SUPPORT FOR Tolman increases, as it appears to be doing, it’s worth asking at whose expense that support might come. He’s already caught up to, if not surpassed, Birmingham. But potential Birmingham voters are not a logical source of support for Tolman, although they come from neighboring districts, share blue-collar roots, and have a record of supporting labor unions. Still, Birmingham, as Senate president, is viewed as the epitome of the Beacon Hill insider, an image Tolman is running flat against. For Tolman to win, then, he must capture a large number of undecided voters and peel off supporters from Reich, with whom he shares a message. In fact, one of the 2002 campaign’s great stories is the battle between Tolman and Reich to capture the title of "reformer" in the race. Both, for example, refuse donations from lobbyists. Both called for Cardinal Law to step down. Both support Clean Elections. Both vow to clean up Beacon Hill.

In what may be seen as a sign he’s getting worried about Tolman, Reich scurried to hold an event with Mass Voters for Clean Elections, Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters on Tuesday to brandish his credentials on the issue of campaign-finance reform. A press release from the Reich campaign went out on Monday saying these groups would "praise Reich’s commitment to Clean Elections." But on Tuesday, the Reich campaign announced that the press conference had been canceled. The groups balked when they learned that what they understood to be a routine meeting with a candidate was being heralded as a press event in support of Reich. "I think it was just a misunderstanding," says Joe O’Brien, the director of Mass Voters for Clean Elections. "We were planning to have a meeting and were trying to work out the details when the press release went out."

Mark Longabaugh, Reich’s campaign manager, has a different account: "They clearly agreed to a press conference because they agreed to an itinerary. There was no ambiguity. They invited us."

So far, Reich, aided by his national celebrity, has been ahead in the polls. He’s regularly pulling around 25 percent, second only to O’Brien, whose support ranges from 30 to 35 percent. But Tolman has something Reich doesn’t: money. Reich acknowledges that he has less than $200,000 of cash on hand. Unless he spends $1 million of his own money, Reich will face the home stretch without significant television advertising. Longabaugh says Reich has already "put a substantial amount" of his own money into the campaign. "We don’t anticipate he will put any more in." It’s possible that the candidate could contribute more to his own campaign coffer, but it won’t be anywhere near $1 million.

Tolman’s high profile in the final stages of the campaign could prevent Reich from overtaking O’Brien. Not surprisingly, the O’Brien campaign embraces this scenario. "Naturally they’re competing for a lot of the same votes," says one O’Brien aide. "As Tolman continues to get his message out, he’ll be eating off of Bob Reich’s plate."

To date, the two candidates have been friendly on the campaign trail. During debates they often sit next to each other, thanks to seating in alphabetical order. And the 6'4" Tolman helped the 4'10-1/2" Reich reach the microphone at a Jewish community debate in Brookline last week. But the Tolman-as-sleeper dynamic is beginning to create tension between the two. (Though not nearly as much as that between Reich and former Democratic National Committee chairman Steve Grossman, who believed Reich’s entry into the race as a Jewish candidate positioning himself as an outsider hurt his now-defunct gubernatorial campaign.)

"If he’s a sleeper candidate, and he were to become the nominee solely on the basis of television ads, I’d be a bit disappointed in the process," says Reich. "I think we expect our candidates to do a lot of spade work. Television cannot and should not be the determining factor on whether somebody gets the nod."

Reich has mostly nice things to say about Tolman. ("I like Warren. I admire his stand on Clean Elections. I’m not going to say anything negative about him, but I think I bring more to the table.") But he works his digs in. Of Tolman’s public financing and his first two ads criticizing Finneran and Birmingham, Reich says it was a mistake "to use the money in a negative way" especially "at this stage of Clean Elections when we’re trying to convince the public that Clean Elections works."

Tolman, for his part, contends he’s the more natural reform candidate. "The difference there is I have a commitment to participating in democracy that he doesn’t," says Tolman. "He didn’t even vote in his own election in Cambridge last year, and the school-committee election was decided by one vote." (Reich spokeswoman Dorie Clark called Tolman’s comments "a desperate attempt to seize on a small oversight" and noted the candidate’s "long-standing history of involvement in political activism in Cambridge, including campaigning for State Representative Alice Wolf and former city councilor Jim Braude and other candidates.") Tolman also brandishes another important fact: in the last few weeks, he has received endorsements from three important progressive groups — Sierra Club, Citizens for Participation in Political Action, and Clean Water Action.

The similarities between Reich and Tolman have not escaped the notice of local progressives. In fact, Jill Stein’s Green Party campaign is licking its chops over the possibility that Reich and Tolman’s combined vote totals may end up higher than the number of votes cast for O’Brien, the declared "centrist" and "fiscal moderate" in the governor’s race. The failure of progressives within the Democratic Party to criticize the "spoiler" dynamic in the primary, Green Party officials point out, demonstrates hypocrisy on the part of Democrats concerned that Stein is taking votes from the eventual Democratic nominee.

"If there’s any combination of Reich and Tolman that would beat Shannon, the Democrats have to ask what right did Bob Reich have to come into the race at the 11th hour?" says Patrick Keaney, Stein’s campaign manager. "If the Democrats are going to be sensitive to the spoiler argument and blame the Greens for Al Gore’s loss and Romney’s victory, if that should happen, they have to address how it’s playing out in their own ranks."

While Tolman has been largely free of criticism from anti-establishment types during this campaign, that has not always been the case. During his 1998 run for lieutenant governor against Dorothy Kelly Gay, the current Somerville mayor accused him of being too close to big-money donors. And after all, as a state senator, Tolman had worked for a tax cut that helped mutual-fund companies.

One issue that his Democratic opponents might seize on (as could Stein, should Tolman win the September 17 primary) is how Clean Elections campaign money has been raised. When Finneran simply refused to fund the law in this budget, the Massachusetts Green Party, the State Republican Committee, and Common Cause, along with Tolman and Stein, sued the state to get the law funded. The issue was decided January 25 when the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the legislature either had to vote the law down or fund it. If it did neither, state assets would have to be sold to fund the law. Which is what happened. Around $2.4 million was raised for Clean Elections when a state hospital and land in Lakeville were sold. The land was purchased by National Development, a former client of Tolman’s when he worked as an attorney for Holland and Knight. The Herald reported the sale and Tolman’s relationship with the buyer August 8 with a story headlined NOT VERY CLEAN.

"Questions have been raised about the sale and purchase of the land, and I think he’s at some point going to have to address those questions in more detail," says Reich.

But Boston real-estate attorney Larry DiCara, who is himself an O’Brien supporter and critic of Tolman’s first two ads, seemed to get the story right in an August 16 letter to the Herald. "Many of us who practice law may regret the actions which former clients take at another time and over which we have no control," wrote DiCara. "In this case, Warren’s engagement by National Development was related to work in Somerville and had nothing to do whatsoever with their other activities."

Tolman maintains nothing inappropriate took place. "If you could draw out a scenario about how I colluded with them, I’d like to know what it would be," Tolman says, explaining that the firm’s principals donated more money to the campaigns of Mitt Romney and Steve Grossman than to him. In fact, they failed even to give him the maximum donation under Clean Elections, $100. He adds that their connection aided neither National Development in getting the land (it was listed along with other state auctions) nor himself. "If they didn’t get it, someone else would have gotten it for $25,000 less."

As for the broader complaint against Tolman, that his campaign is prompting the state to sell off its assets, he says "I thought the whole process was a disgrace, but we had no place to turn. We tried to keep the heat on for the legislature to finally to do the right thing on this issue. And if we didn’t push, there would not be any Clean Elections money for anybody." Eleven candidates for the state legislature, including Paul Lachelier of Cambridge, Bill Allen and Kathryn Brookins of Boston, and Jonathan Leavitt of Lawrence are also running as Clean Elections candidates.

BICKERING WITH Reich about who is the more pure candidate is one thing. But if Tolman hopes to win the nomination, he must overtake the front-runner, O’Brien. Tolman claims that task has been made somewhat easier by the O’Brien’s campaign’s recent rough patch. Republicans have launched an assault on her claim that she blew the whistle on the Big Dig and on the $4 billion in pension-fund losses. While both attacks are unfounded, they have nonetheless robbed O’Brien of momentum. Even though O’Brien does not, under state law, have day-to-day management responsibility of the pension fund, she still happens to be in the saddle at a time when it has experienced losses. Much like a president who suffers when the economy goes down under his watch or reaps the rewards when the tide rises, her ability to run as treasurer is suffering through no real fault of her own. What Tolman does fault O’Brien for, in his words, is being close to the Speaker on whom he blames many of the state’s problems.

"I’m a reformer.... I have a more powerful message and I’m a better candidate against Mitt Romney," says Tolman, noting that 29 of 32 members of Finneran’s legislative leadership team voted for O’Brien at the Democratic Convention in Worcester. "If people like Tom Finneran, they’ll love Shannon O’Brien."

To that, O’Brien campaign manager Dwight Robson points out that O’Brien planned to run as a Clean Elections candidate before Finneran gutted the law. He also adds that "as we get toward the end of the primary campaign, other candidates who may not be doing as well as they want to be doing are going to get a little desperate at leveling political attacks at her. It’s a clear indication her campaign continues to pick up momentum."

To be honest, you don’t hear much about O’Brien when you’re on the campaign trail with Tolman. You do hear Democratic voters urging Tolman to beat Mitt Romney, a man to whom Tolman claims he delivered UPS packages during a stint as a driver in 1983 and 1984. Like many politicians in the midst of uphill campaigns, Tolman seems to be infused with a sense of destiny. He sees the fact that he, while working his way through law school, had a job as a service worker for the lordly Romney, as portending a general campaign where the publicly financed candidate faces down the plutocrat.

After doing something everybody else, including O’Brien, had given up on — receiving Clean Elections money — Tolman’s campaign is still bursting with energy. After two hours of shaking hands with commuters at North Station on Friday, Tolman shows up at the suggestion of one of them at a Greek festival at the Church of Saints Constantine and Helen in Cambridge. He hands out flyers, shakes hands, and beams at the almost ubiquitous recognition on the part of the patrons. "Tikanis," he booms to festival-goers, showing off the Greek for "how are you" that he learned during years representing a district that contained Armenians, Greeks, and Russian Jews. (He also knows enough Armenian, Portuguese, and Spanish to introduce himself and his campaign to prospective voters in those communities.) With the sun setting and his driver itching to get home, Tolman finally decides to call it a night. "I love doing this, so if you told me there was another one in Randolph, I might hop in my car and go down there," says Tolman, glancing at voters eating loukamades, Greek fried dough, and souvlaki, and dancing to bouzouki music. "I’ll be back here tomorrow night, guaranteed. There’ll be more people." His goal? "Just create a buzz."

Tolman’s ads have done just that. Whether it will translate into votes on September 17 is the question the next three weeks of the campaign will answer.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com