By John McElhenny, Associated Press, 10/08/02

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BOSTON -- The candidates for governor are gearing up for the third televised debate, but this time there's a twist: All five candidates will be included in Wednesday's debate, unlike the previous two faceoffs between Shannon O'Brien and Mitt Romney.

"This is an unusual kind of political event," said Kent Rissmiller, a social science professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

He said the debate could vault Libertarian Carla Howell, Green Jill Stein, and independent Barbara Johnson forward in the polls, just as independent candidate Ross Perot benefited from strong debate performances in the 1992 presidential race.

Perot went on to win 19 percent of the vote.

Wednesday's debate will be broadcast at 10:15 p.m. on WLVI-TV, which serves the Greater Boston television market, including Worcester. Voters in western Massachusetts can watch the debate on C-Span or listen to it on WBZ-AM radio.

Jon Keller, the WLVI political analyst who will moderate the debate, said the inclusion of all five candidates was notable for a simple reason.

"I'm really psyched to see four women on stage running for governor of Massachusetts," he said. Massachusetts has never elected a woman governor.

Carla Howell, who won 12 percent of the vote in an unsuccessful 2000 bid to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, said the debate will mark the beginning of the campaign for many voters.

"This will be dramatically different," Howell said. She planned during the debate to promote a question headed for the ballot in November that would repeal the income tax. She also plans to highlight legislation that she says unfairly limits gun ownership.

Polls have shown Howell, Stein and Johnson each to be favored by fewer than 5 percent of voters, with four weeks remaining until the Nov. 5 election. But the candidates say a lack of coverage has hurt them.

Stein, who protested outside the first two debates in Springfield and Worcester but was not allowed to participate, said she planned to talk about universal health care, a fairer tax structure and the creation of jobs at "living wages."

"It'll be a much more lively, unpredictable, colorful debate," she predicted.

Howell, Stein and Johnson were invited to the WLVI debate and another one in two weeks only after they filed two unsuccessful lawsuits which challenged their exclusion from previous debates.

The last debate on Oct. 29 is scheduled to include only O'Brien, the state treasurer, and Romney, the former Olympic chief.

Johnson, an attorney who specializes in father's rights, said she was "absolutely overwhelmed and delighted," about being allowed into the televised debate.

She said she would focus on three main topics: alternative energy sources, secondary education and homeland security.

Some observers have noted that with only an hour of debate time, the inclusion of all five candidates will take away from the ability of the leading candidates, O'Brien and Romney, to explain their views.

Rissmiller, the WPI professor, said the minor-party candidates don't stand a strong chance of winning, but they may succeed in introducing topics that haven't been talked about, and in eating into O'Brien and Romney's bases of support.

"For Democrats and Republicans to lose 10 or 15 or 18 percent of the vote to third-party candidates is really going to make them nervous," he said.