Debt trap

Why Cellucci's debt matters -- and why Harshbarger must treat it with caution. Plus, the state's most colorful race: "Mr. Golf" vs. "Mr. Grandstander."

by Michael Crowley

As the son of a preacher, Scott Harshbarger knows all about temptation. He knows how shiny and sweet the apple can look, and he knows the dangers of biting into it.

In his campaign for governor, the starchy attorney general thought he could resist the political apple. He thought he could escape the vagaries of modern campaigning, the cheap shots, and the nasty negative attacks, and win by explaining what a decent, honest guy he is and what a swell vision he's got for the future of the Commonwealth.

But all the while, that big, juicy red fruit -- Republican acting governor Paul Cellucci's radioactively suspicious $700,000 in personal debt -- was dangling just over his head. Harshbarger refused to touch it, but as his campaign spun its wheels, dozens of seductive Eves implored him to give it a taste. Columnists, supporters, and advisers all urged him to attack Cellucci's debt. Reporters and debate panelists asked him about it every single day.

This week, after three weeks of watching his campaign go nowhere, after being vilified and lied about by Paul Cellucci, and after boring the hell out of everybody, Scott Harshbarger finally succumbed.

"He's been asked several times by people how he accounts for this debt, and it's clear the numbers don't add up," Harshbarger unexpectedly offered in response to a question at a Monday press conference. "He continues to maintain that he is the fiscally responsible one, and I find that claim to be somewhat shallow. . . . Maybe Paul doesn't know how to handle money."

In the state political world, those words amounted to a thunderclap of near-biblical proportions. HARSHBARGER TEES OFF ON CELLUCCI'S FINANCES, declared a breathless Boston Herald front page, echoing a widespread media tone suggesting that some long-bottled pressure had finally been released. At last, the governor's race had truly come to life. But is this really what Harshbarger needed? If he isn't careful, he risks turning this election into a referendum on an issue that voters have indicated doesn't bother them.

The tricky thing is, it should: it's hard to believe that people wouldn't be more concerned about Cellucci's debt if they paid more attention to the details. Harshbarger needs to wake people up to what's wrong with Cellucci's debt without seeming like a desperate, bitter challenger. And in his initial statements this week, he was making the wrong argument.

Why does the debt matter? Simply put, money really is the root of all evil. People do bad things when they're strapped for cash -- and a governor is in a position to do big favors for big rewards. Consider a detail from the infamous Whitewater story: in 1985, Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan owner Jim McDougal repaid a $50,000 personal debt for then-governor Bill Clinton at a time when the bank was seeking soft regulatory treatment from the state. No quid pro quo was ever established, but the troubled S&L was allowed to struggle on -- before going bust a few years later at a cost of $60 million to taxpayers.

Paul Cellucci says that his assets exceed his liabilities, and that he'll inherit big money from his businessman father. But by borrowing against his every asset -- except in the case of a curious $100,000 bank loan for which he somehow wasn't required to provide collateral -- he's put everything he owns at risk, and he spends thousands of dollars a month on interest alone.

That's hardly a stable situation, but still probably not enough to disqualify him from being governor. It's how Cellucci has handled the issue, however, that raises the most serious concerns. Like Bill Clinton, Cellucci has turned what people might have been willing to dismiss as a personal issue into a public-trust issue. Rather than refuse to discuss the matter, Cellucci has instead given incomplete answers. He casts his debt as part of a struggle for the American Dream: he was putting two daughters through private school and fixing up his home, he says, just when his income dropped (when Cellucci became lieutenant governor in 1990, he had to give up the law practice he'd maintained as a state senator). But closer examination shows that his explanation doesn't add up. His income drop, for instance, was minor; $83,000 in tuition is being paid by loans taken out not by Cellucci himself but his wife and father; and although Cellucci has claimed that he spent $130,000 fixing up his home, he filed permits for just $21,000 in renovations. He refuses to account for the obvious gaps in his explanation.

Why is Cellucci telling only part of the story? What else has he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that he doesn't want us to know about? And what right does he have to tell a half-truth to the public?

These are the questions Scott Harshbarger should be asking, rather than trying to link Cellucci's debt to his management of the state. Voters have too much evidence to the contrary to believe that Cellucci is a threat to screw up the state budget. On this issue, Harshbarger needs to go for the throat -- by explicitly making this a matter of honesty and integrity -- or leave it alone, and hope that the media do the dirty work for him.

Hammering away at the debt without explaining its true relevance, and straining to present the issue as a matter of public policy, will make Harshbarger look desperate and too clever by half. It will also drown out his truly valuable and marketable message: that Massachusetts should be a state with an activist government, constantly looking for new ways to help people left behind by the economy, and not one where a passive government takes a back seat to the free market. With those themes, Harshbarger should be able to appeal to the better angels of the Massachusetts electorate. Lead yourself not into temptation, Scott.

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For pure State House comedy, how can you top Joe DeNucci?

The state's auditor since 1986, DeNucci -- who is facing a surprisingly tough reelection challenge this fall -- is a former middleweight boxer, a consummate Democratic insider, and a reliably raw presence in the halls of the State House.

For instance, there was the time when DeNucci agreed to an impromptu on-camera debate with an opponent and then, when it started to go badly for him, ruefully declared, "I must have had rocks in my head." There was also his machismo-infused sparring with state transportation secretary James Kerasiotes, who called DeNucci "a bum"; the burly DeNucci had previously grabbed a Kerasiotes underling by the tie and declared, "You tell that fucking Greek he hasn't heard the last of me." He later settled things by explaining, "He acts like a tough guy -- I am one." A man fiercely proud of his Italian heritage, DeNucci blew up last year after Senator John Kerry made an offhand joke about the impotence of the Italian army: "I'm sure he wouldn't have the guts to say it about Jews or blacks or any other group," DeNucci fumed. And, of course, there was the infamous 1995 "No-Show Joe" exposé in the Boston Herald, which found that DeNucci frequently worked three-day weeks, left his office by 3 p.m., and could often be found on the golf links when his official schedule placed him at his desk.

The only thing more entertaining than the 59-year-old DeNucci himself may be watching him fight for his political survival against a brash upstart 24 years his junior: Mike Duffy, a Bill Weld protégé who served seven years as chairman of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) and who is seeking to become just the second openly gay person elected to statewide office in the United States -- as a Republican, no less.

Of the six statewide constitutional officers, the auditor may be just slightly less obscure than the secretary of state. But as the official watchdog of state government, an auditor can have a real impact: a hard-hitting audit that uncovers millions of dollars lost to waste or inefficiency can change policy or bring about the overhaul of an entire state agency. The office has been an especially powerful counterweight to privatization attempts by the Weld and Cellucci administrations, thanks to a 1995 law barring the state from privately contracting work traditionally performed by public employees unless the auditor determines that it will save money (which DeNucci never did).

Because the duties of an auditor are relatively straightforward -- keeping an eye on things, and letting us know when they're not working right -- the differences between DeNucci and Duffy are more about image than agenda. Duffy attacks DeNucci as a party-machine hack who's in the pocket of special interests. DeNucci disparages Duffy as an inexperienced grandstander and, showing typical restraint, as "a very serious threat to democracy." One result has been a lively and increasingly nasty campaign, as evidenced by a debate last week at which the candidates referred to each other as "Mr. Golf" and "Mr. Grandstander."

Another result is a race much narrower than anyone would have guessed even a few weeks ago. Although early polls showed Duffy with barely a foothold against DeNucci, the numbers appear to be shifting. A Saturday Boston Globe poll showed DeNucci with a slim lead of 41 percent to 33 percent, while a poll conducted by UMass's McCormack Institute showed DeNucci with just a 28 percent to 24 percent lead.

A Duffy win would be a major upset. Joe DeNucci may not be a household name, but within the state Democratic Party, he is something of an institution. Dating back to his days as a state representative from Newton in the 1980s -- he went on to serve as chairman of the legislature's human-services committee -- DeNucci has carefully built up political alliances throughout the state. "He is bigger than just his job title," says Democratic consultant Dan Payne. If Duffy triumphs, he'll be a certified party star, the biggest GOP dragon-slayer since a young Joe Malone ousted the patronage-happy, 26-year incumbent state treasurer Bob "Cranie" Crane in 1990.

Earlier this year, DeNucci even looked like he might go without a serious challenger for the third straight time. But then along came Duffy, an ambitious liberal Republican who had taken over the high-profile MCAD job when he was just 27. Duffy won credit for revitalizing the agency, but he was also widely criticized as self-promotional and reckless with his accusations; that rap followed Duffy through his brief stint as director of the state office of consumer affairs last year.

Long ambitious for bigger things, Duffy began a campaign for state treasurer last winter. But he bailed out of the race in March when two millionaire businessmen looked ready to battle him for the party nomination (only one, Bain and Company executive Bob Maginn, ended up entering the race; he's now the GOP nominee). Duffy said he didn't have the money to compete, but his campaign had also gotten off to a rocky start, with questions raised about some of his fundraising tactics. In any case, the GOP couldn't find anyone to challenge DeNucci, so Duffy simply switched races and became a candidate for auditor.

Duffy's early approach was to paint DeNucci as a social Neanderthal, contrasting his own strong support for abortion rights with DeNucci's pro-life stance. Duffy also suggested that DeNucci was anti-gay rights, citing his support for a 1986 state law that barred gays from becoming foster parents. But that approach sparked a backlash from liberals who haven't forgotten DeNucci's staunch support of human-services programs as a state legislator. No less a champion of gay rights and progressive values than US Representative Barney Frank -- who introduced DeNucci at the Democratic State Convention last June -- ridiculed Duffy's charges.

Now Duffy is changing tacks, thanks to yet another DeNucci whack-out in the Herald. Last week the paper reported that DeNucci had broken a self-imposed pledge not to collect money from groups -- such as public-employee unions -- that are affected by his office. The Herald also found that DeNucci had collected $20,000 from nursing-home operators and their families since January 1996 -- and just happened not to have audited a single nursing home during that time.

That leaves a much cleaner opening for Duffy. "Joe DeNucci is someone who has been on Beacon Hill for nearly 20 years, and as a result he has been bought and paid for by special interests," says Duffy spokesman John Spampinato. "In contrast, Mike Duffy has made a career out of working and turning decrepit bureaucracies into aggressive watchdogs and established his reputation as someone who would not back down from powerful lobbyists and special interests on Beacon Hill."

That sort of talk has inevitably led to more classic DeNucci moments. At last week's debate, he was pounding the table and glowering at Duffy so angrily that one of his aides had to signal for him to calm down. "You're a reckless, say-anything kind of candidate [trying] to get your name in the newspaper," DeNucci blared. And referring to his time in the legislature, DeNucci turned to his 35-year-old opponent and cracked: "You might have been in junior high school at the time."

It's impossible to resist pointing out that, as a boxer, DeNucci has quite literally been on the ropes before. In all probability his name recognition, political machine, and major fundraising advantage will mean he wins this bout. Whatever happens, though, the next three weeks before Election Day will be fun to watch. At a time when all the life seems to have been sucked out of state politics -- in a ho-hum era of Harshbargers and Celluccis -- it just doesn't get any better than this.

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.