Vanity Fair gave it more ink than a feature on Sharon Stone. “60 Minutes” sent cameras to capture it. Even the Times of London breathlessly chronicled it.
In a political year rapidly dwindling into dullness, the profoundly quirky, hotly contested and highly photogenic Senate battle in Massachusetts between Republican Gov. William Weld and Democratic Sen. John Kerry has emerged as one of the sexiest and most suspenseful political races in the country.
The contenders are a patrician political pair, evenly matched in good looks, big bucks, silver-spoon upbringing and Ivy League credentials. Weld is married to a Democratic-minded daughter of the Roosevelt dynasty, while Kerry recently married Republican Teresa Heinz, widow of Pennsylvania Sen. John Heinz and heiress to a $700 million ketchup fortune.
Adding spice to this already savory scenario: The notion, however questionable, that the victor might be poised to make a run at the White House four years from now.
The campaign has included such zippy photo opportunities as a fully clothed Weld diving into the Charles River to dramatize his commitment to the environment and such zesty exchanges as Kerry’s comment to Weld, “Governor, you talk out of both sides of your mouth more than the Budweiser frogs.”
But under the showy confrontations, their race may provide an instructive test of how much importance party affiliation still holds for American voters.
Traditionally Democratic, Bay State voters gave Bill Clinton one of his biggest victory margins in 1992, but cheerfully returned Republican Weld to a second term in the governor’s mansion with 71 percent of the vote in 1994.
That same year, the state’s Democratic Party mightily rallied votes–many from the same people who supported Weld–to buck up a seriously faltering Sen. Edward Kennedy and secure the Senate seat he has held since 1962.
“Parties have become a blurred area,” said Art Green, a Boston accountant. Like 47 percent of all registered Massachusetts voters, Green is unaffiliated with a party, while 40 percent are Democrats and 13 percent Republicans.
“I mean, Bill Clinton, what is he? Is he really a Democrat? I don’t think so. But, I really don’t think it’s important anymore. There seems to be very few issues left that separate the two parties, abortion being one of them.”
But abortion does not separate Kerry and Weld, both of whom favor abortion rights. Money is not an advantage for either side: In an unprecedented move, the candidates agreed to a $6.9 million campaign spending limit.
They differ on just about everything else, from how to deal with taxes, crime and welfare reform to their personalities and styles on the stump.
Weld, a former federal prosecutor, is credited with transforming the post-Michael Dukakis “Taxachusetts” into a booming state where unemployment has reached a seven-year low, taxes have been cut 15 times, welfare rolls have been sliced to the bone, criminal statutes have been toughened and state budgets are always balanced.
The governor may be a conservative free-marketer who promotes business and privatization, but he exhibits a tolerant stance on gay rights and abortion that makes him as appealing to the state’s more liberal voters as it makes him loathsome to his own party’s right wing.
Weld continually attacks Kerry as a Washington insider and a tax-and-spend liberal, interpreting Kerry’s opposition to the death penalty as being soft on crime and his support for providing welfare benefits to alcoholics and drug addicts as wasting taxpayers’ money on substance abusers.
Kerry retaliates by painting Weld as a heartless acolyte of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), whom Weld once described as his “ideological soulmate.”
The senator, who is seeking his third term, castigates Weld for cutting aid to education, says he puts needy children in jeopardy with his welfare program and is a know-nothing when it comes to foreign affairs.
Kerry tends to run less against Weld as a person than as a symbol of the Republican Party who will do its conservative bidding if elected.
But Kerry’s ability to do this has had little apparent success so far. In a recent Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll, 47 percent of the respondents said they believed Weld would keep his independence in Washington, compared with only 22 percent who said they thought he would knuckle under to Gingrich-style conservatism.
Moreover, the contrasts between the candidates’ personalities and demeanors threaten to overshadow their differences on issues.
According to the poll, Kerry is charismatically challenged, considered “warm and likable” by only 31 percent of the respondents compared to 45 percent for Weld.
Weld, with his ginger hair, ruddy cheeks and pale blue eyes, possesses an Irish twinkle that belies his solid WASP credentials. The scion of a family that includes a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the earliest benefactors of Harvard University, Weld, 51, is known for his fondness for late-night poker games, “amber-colored liquid” of the high-proof variety and a devotion to the Grateful Dead that led him to consider flying the state’s flags at half-staff when lead guitarist Jerry Garcia died.
An avid sportsman, Kerry, 52, may have the Irish name, but he’s burdened with a brooding demeanor that is not relieved by his craggy face and stiff bearing that some interpret as arrogance. A Vietnam War hero turned anti-war activist, Kerry is descended from a wealthy shipping family and is a graduate of Yale University.
Few Kerry supporters describe their candidate as scintillating, but many say he is just misunderstood. “He’s quiet,” said Patti Sardella, a doctoral student and single mother in suburban Lexington. “He’s a thinking, caring person who will work till he dies for the underdog.”
With the race neck and neck, the state’s still-significant 10 or 15 percent of undecided voters may make the difference. There is yet no indication of which way these voters will go.
