Kerry's style a real turnoff

The man none of them call on Capitol Hill is Senator John F. Kerry, the state's Democratic presidential hopeful. "Why bother? You'd be lucky to have anyone on his staff call you back," says Murphy, who traveled with a group of Massachusetts elected officials to New Hampshire yesterday to campaign for Howard Dean.

Murphy and his colleagues say their support for Dean has more to do with the former Vermont governor's strength as a candidate than Kerry's weakness, but it is clear that among many local officials in Massachusetts the state's junior senator is reaping what he sowed.

Imperious, arrogant, and indifferent are a few of the milder adjectives some use to describe their increasingly rare dealings with Kerry. Anecdotes abound about being shut out of his campaign announcement and then invited at the last minute when it looked like he might not fill Faneuil Hall. Especially irritating to many is that after his hard-fought reelection victory over William F. Weld, Kerry acknowledged that he had not been sufficiently responsive to local officials and vowed to change. "Ha," scoffed Reeves, a former Cambridge mayor who has held elective office for 16 years. "Nothing changed."

To be sure, Kerry has dozens of local politicians in his camp and the support of Kennedy and the rest of the congressional delegation. (Kennedy was campaigning for him in Portsmouth yesterday while this group was in Salem.) But Murphy, for one, doubts the depth or the staying power of those commitments. "People come up to me in the corridors of the State House all the time," he said at a Dean rally before heading up to New Hampshire. "They tell me they want to join us but they are waiting until a certain candidate realizes it's time to focus on his next Senate race."

Loyalty to the local guy is "an old-fashioned political idea," says Murphy, who was first attracted to Dean's politics when Dean was governor and he was a law student in Vermont. A conservative Democrat, Murphy likes a candidate who balances budgets, endorses the death penalty, and wins the support of the National Rifle Association. Kaufman, Murphy's more liberal colleague, likes Dean's support of early childhood education and opposition to corporate giveaways. Both agree with Dean on Iraq.

"No one would mistake us for ideological twins," Kaufman says of himself and Murphy. "That's why I think Howard Dean can win."

Reeves also disagrees with Dean on gun control and capital punishment but says he is energized by a candidate he thinks can bridge those divides. "Dean would be a president of all the people because he listens to people. Kerry listens to himself."

To illustrate the point, Reeves recounts a visit to Capitol Hill with other members of the National League of Cities to talk about local issues. The contrast between Kennedy and Kerry could not have been greater, he says. "Senator Kennedy comes right out to greet us, catches us up on what is happening with legislation and then wants to hear from us. `You are on the front lines,' he tells us. `I need to hear what you think, what your problems are.' Kerry sends an aide out, keeps us waiting, and, when he does show up, he tells us some big thoughts he was just having. Kerry does not want to hear what we think."

Representative Frank Smizik from Brookline says that Dean is the most exciting presidential prospect in decades, that he has restored the public's confidence in the political process. For that, Smizik and a lot of his colleagues are passing over Massachusetts' favorite son for the boy next door.

Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.