Tactics for desperate times
Ka-boom! Implosion you heard is collapse of Healey candidacy. Two TV polls have her now trailing by 27 and 25 points. Her unfavorable is above 50 percent. It's over.
Kerry Healey's lurid ad about rape of white woman in parking garage has strong racial undertones. Using reality-style surveillance camera, spot uses racial stereotype of lone white woman about to be jumped by black rapist lurking behind cars.
What it reveals is desperate Healey using fear to mug Deval Patrick in dark, offensive, and racist TV commercial. For weeks her slogan has been, "It's about race, stupid."
Healey's not catching rapists. Boston Phoenix analyzed latest Department of Justice crime data. Arrests for rape under Romney-Healey now almost one-half of what they were before dynamic duo took office. Went from 26 percent to 14 percent. Using these data, Patrick campaign could've made rape TV spot of its own. To its credit, it didn't.
LaGuer is about race. Latino Benjamin LaGuer faced panel where one juror said in sworn affidavit that another juror declared: "The goddamned spic is guilty just sitting there. Look at him. Why even bother having a trial?"
Patrick was fooled by LaGuer, joining such soft touches as former Boston University president John Silber, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Styron.
And one more. This week Mitt Romney tells Channel 4's Jon Keller that LaGuer was "well-spoken." What kind of man would praise rapist?
Immigration is new welfare. Healey's immigration ad also plays on white fear. Wise observer says immigration is welfare of our time. Problem isn't that they're illegal; it's that they're immigrants. They look different. Talk different. Come from different parts of world. But they came here for same reason my grandparents did: to give their children better lives.
Healey ad positions Patrick as favoring "them" versus "us" -- African and Caribbean blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, and Asians versus Christian and Jewish whites of European stock. Ad alleges Patrick wants to give illegal immigrants (more likely their children) in-state tuition, taking money from "our students." And Healey says he'll let them get driver's licenses to buy airline tickets (and fly into buildings?). If driver's licenses were only thing holding back terrorists from hijacking planes, don't you think they could get phony ones in no time? Hell, underage kids use fake I.D. to buy beer every weekend.
Healey vs. reality. Why does Healey keep saying crime is down? My sources in Pride's Crossing say it's because there's big drop in her town's worst crime -- wearing white after Labor Day.
Patrick guilt-free. Shelby Steele, conservative black social critic, speaking of Senator Barack Obama, told Time magazine: "White people are just thrilled when a prominent black person comes along and doesn't rub their noses in racial guilt."
Came up hard way, happily married, Harvard educated, corporate lawyer, accomplished leader in Clinton administration, upbeat, comfortable traveler in jet stream of elites, well off, and terrific communicator -- Deval Patrick is guilt less pleasure. He's at least as compelling to whites as to blacks.
Christy Mihos's head misplaced. Mihos says independent candidates close fast in final days. I was consultant for successful independent for governor in Maine, Angus King. At this point in his first race, he was tied with Democrat, whom he went on to beat. Mihos is now 44 points behind Patrick. I don't believe in virgin birth, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or political miracles.
Romney for Patrick. On CNN, Romney predicted he'd be replaced by Democrat.
Which he wants. He wants to be able to say, "When I turned out the lights, everything was peachy." If something bad happens with, say, Big Dig tunnel, he wants to be able to blame Democrat Patrick.
For whom the tolls fell. Romney finally gave Healey something to do -- posture on tolls on western Turnpike. Romney's not doing it for Healey. He's doing it to show toll-obsessed New Hampshire residents that he can be as cheap as they are. Was third in recent presidential poll of N.H. Republicans. Behind John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Romney now has talking point to use on gullible N.H. Republicans. He can say he prevented rape of toll payers.
Dan Payne is a Boston-based media consultant who has worked for former governors Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts and Angus King of Maine, and, until November 2005, for candidate Deval Patrick.
