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Muddied waters
Tom Reilly’s torment. Plus, Christy Mihos eyes the governor’s office.
BY ADAM REILLY

Has Tom Reilly doomed the Democrats?

Consider this worst-case scenario: following the September 7 decision by Reilly, the state’s attorney general, to allow an anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative to proceed, a nasty schism splits the Massachusetts Democratic Party. Between now and next summer’s gubernatorial primary, virtually every left-of-center Democratic voter decides to back Reilly’s opponent, former Clinton-administration civil-rights enforcer Deval Patrick, who’s been a staunch supporter of equal marriage. Still, thanks to strong name recognition and scads of cash, Reilly manages to land the Democratic nomination.

Come Election Day, though, lingering antipathy toward Reilly makes many of these Patrick backers stay home — and among those who actually vote, a surprising number choose the (hypothetical) Republican nominee, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, who’s regarded as a closet liberal on social issues. When Healey wins by a slim margin, sending the Democrats to their fifth-straight gubernatorial loss, the finger-pointing starts — and Reilly’s ruling is quickly pegged as the beginning of the end.

Maybe this pessimism is premature. After all, Mitt Romney could stun everyone and seek re-election. And Reilly could coast to general-election victory, or lose in the primary. Still, it’s hard to find anyone who thinks the AG helped his cause last week. "If I had advised him on this as a political matter," says one Democratic consultant, "I would have said, ‘This is not a close call. You could end Patrick’s candidacy today simply by saying no.’ He made a huge mistake."

"We really believed that this issue was behind us, and that we could focus in 2006 on our gubernatorial campaign and our legislative races and the issues that really matter to families living in this state," adds another Democratic observer. "And with a stroke of his pen, Tom Reilly has reversed that. It’s extraordinarily frustrating and disappointing."

Maybe so, for unaligned Democrats. But in other quarters, Reilly’s decision is very good news indeed. Start with Kerry Healey, the early frontrunner for the Republican nomination if Romney doesn’t run again. The Healey camp was quick to capitalize on the furor surrounding Reilly’s announcement, promptly arranging a Boston Globe interview in which the lieutenant governor backed civil unions for gays and lesbians. (Romney, Healey’s boss, has hardened his opposition to civil unions as he preps for a presidential bid.) It’s worth noting that Healey may actually be less broad-minded on the subject than Reilly, who’s voiced vague support for the post-Goodridge status quo. That said, by publicly separating herself from Romney at this particular moment, Healey is quietly urging the gay-and-lesbian electorate to view her as an ally.

This, in turn, could make the 2006 governor’s race look a lot like the contest in 1990, when Republican Bill Weld — who was considered more gay-friendly than Democrat John Silber — won a close victory after receiving significant financial and electoral support from gays and lesbians. (Of course, now that Weld wants to become governor of New York, he’s started bashing gay marriage.) "Reilly arrogantly believes that, no matter what, our community’s going to be with him," says one gay activist. "He is so badly miscalculating on that, it’s not funny."

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Deval Patrick couldn’t have asked for a better break. The recent endorsements of fellow Clinton labor secretaries Robert Reich and Alexis Herman notwithstanding, the last few months have not been kind to Patrick’s campaign. Plenty of Democratic activists seem to regard Patrick as more dynamic and compelling than Reilly, but his financial struggles and poor name recognition remain worrisome. Reilly’s ballot-initiative ruling doesn’t banish these concerns, but it does throw the contrast between Patrick and Reilly into sharper relief. And, coupled with Healey’s maneuvers on the Republican side, it could undermine the notion that Reilly is the more viable of the two Democratic candidates. "This is the earth moving," argues a Patrick supporter. "This is not about same-sex marriage; this is about a yearning for leadership — ‘Tell me what the hell you want the state to be?’ And the more people see from Reilly, the more they’re thinking they’re not going to see it in him."

That’s the Patrick spin, anyway. As for the AG’s supporters, they’ll likely incorporate this episode into the narrative they’ve been crafting around Reilly for months — one that has their candidate doing what he thinks is right, personal and political calculation be damned. It’s difficult for non-attorneys to assess the validity of Reilly’s legal reasoning (although it’s noteworthy that two former attorneys general, Scott Harshbarger and James Shannon, urged Reilly to rule differently than he did). But it does seem clear that Reilly did himself more political harm than good by ruling as he did. Given his blasé take on the current marriage status quo, gay-marriage opponents won’t like his stance on the issue, even after the recent ballot-initiative ruling — and as already noted, this should make Reilly’s primary fight more difficult.

Expect this to be pointed out, again and again, by Reilly partisans in the coming months. The comments of Steve Grossman, the former state and national Democratic Committee chairman and Reilly-campaign treasurer, are instructive here. Grossman, who supports full marriage rights, admits to being disappointed by Reilly’s decision. Furthermore, Grossman’s wife, Barbara — who’s a board member of the pro-gay-marriage group MassEquality — publicly repudiated Reilly after his ruling last week and, for good measure, made a $500 contribution to the Patrick campaign. Still, Grossman is standing by his man.

"Tom Reilly’s case to the people of Massachusetts does not rest on where he stands on one particular issue or another," Grossman insists. "It rests on his integrity, honesty, and a hundred-percent commitment to giving the people of Massachusetts a full day’s work for a full day’s pay.... He is as honest as the sun, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with him."

Generously put. And the AG is lucky to have Grossman in his corner. But Reilly may soon learn that, when it comes to winning a gubernatorial election, honesty and integrity aren’t enough.

 

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Issue Date: September 16 - 22, 2005
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