With motherly love, she extols candidate's softer side
WESTBOROUGH -- Republican Kerry Healey and her mother, Shirley Murphy, climbed into a black GMC Yukon on their way from a community meeting to a meet-and-greet. Healey spotted a tiny stain on her mother's carnation pink cable-knit sweater. She started digging in her purse for a Tide to Go stain remover stick.
"They are fabulous!" the mother said.
"These are, like, one of the most important campaign tools," the daughter agreed.
It might have been a detergent commercial, one of those sun-dappled confections with airy music. But Healey specializes in quite another kind of advertising these days: attack ads that even neutral observers call the nastiest the state has seen in years.
In a matter of weeks, the gubernatorial campaign has transformed a mild-mannered, slightly stiff lieutenant governor into a candidate who has received national attention for her negativity. Her stump speech is heavy on critiques of Democratic opponent Deval L. Patrick. Even faithful supporter Barbara Smithson, a nurse from Uxbridge who calls Healey brilliant, admitted, "I can't imagine having a cup of coffee with her."
The mother and daughter duo, traveling through Central Massachusetts on a beautiful fall day last Saturday, write off such views of the candidate.
"I just simply laugh," Murphy said lightly. "They don't know my Kerry. My Kerry is warm and sensitive and so good to her parents, and she's so good to her children and her friends. She's the first person who will go to bat for you if you have a problem."
Murphy, 80, has recently emerged as Healey's sidekick on the trail each weekend. She is a kind of softener, a stand-in for Healey's mostly absent nuclear family. She appears alongside her daughter in Healey's latest ad, a positive spot depicting Healey as a friend of seniors, veterans, and overtaxed residents.
At Healey's community meetings with supporters, Murphy gently introduces her and hugs her at the end. She has organized a cadre of residents at Brooksby Village, the Peabody retirement community where she lives, to make phone calls for the campaign.
Murphy can be a bit looser than her daughter. At a community meeting in Leominster, Murphy broke off her introduction when she caught sight of a woman in the front row.
"I love your red outfit," she said. "You look so cute."
But mother and daughter are not exactly a study in contrasts.
Healey, 46, is 5 feet 9 inches tall; her mother, who looks far younger than she is, is an inch shorter. Their hair is the same shade of ash-blonde, cut just above the shoulders. The other day, they both wore conservative sweaters, khaki pants, and plain brown loafers. At meetings with supporters, they perch on twin stools with the same perfect posture, their long legs neatly crossed. At Harry's Restaurant in Westborough, they split an order of fried shrimp.
Both can be spontaneous, if not always in the same situations. At George's Coney Island, Worcester's hot dog institution, Murphy devoured a dog with chili and onions; Healey got hers plain, though she sprang for lunch for a Patrick aide who is assigned to follow her around on the trail.
Murphy, a retired elementary school teacher, moved here from Ormond Beach, Fla., just after her husband died about two years ago. She and Healey said they try to do something together each week. It used to be strolls through the mall or dinner with the grandchildren. Now that Healey has little time for anything else, they said, that thing is campaigning.
Murphy seems to enjoy it. She said she got goose bumps when she attended last week's debate at Faneuil Hall -- "To think people you read about in school were right here in this building!" -- and rhapsodized about the foliage.
"I'm seeing the four seasons for the first time in my life, the orange and yellow and brown," she said to a Westborough supporter. "It's magnificent."
Murphy prides herself on her high-energy schedule. She records voice-overs and works on a program, "The Village View," on Brooksby Village's closed-circuit television station. She also calls herself "a great exponent" of physical fitness.
"I do the treadmill for 20 minutes," Murphy said, "then I do machines for upper and lower body, then I do free weights -- now I'm down to 8 pounds, which is not good, I should get back to 12 -- and then I do the recumbent bike for another 20 minutes," she said. "I'm there about an hour. I started at 50, and I'm 80 and still doing it, and I think it's very productive."
"I'm abysmal at that type of thing," Healey said good-naturedly.
Murphy said she has never seen her daughter's most controversial campaign ad, which shows a woman walking alone in a darkened parking garage as a female voice castigates Patrick for his advocacy on behalf of a convicted rapist. Murphy said she is too busy preparing for segments of "The Village View."
"I have to learn a lot, because I interview people and I interview them for 10 minutes straight and I don't want to have notes, because that doesn't make me happy," she said. When pressed about Healey's negative campaigning, Murphy said she believes that conflict is simply a part of campaigns. "When it's over, you shake hands and move on," she said pleasantly.
"She was president of her class from sixth grade to 12th grade, and in 12th grade she was president of the entire student body," Murphy added. "She has been interested in the world around her for a long, long time. She wants to serve, and I'm proud of her."
That image, of a popular, engaged young woman who simply wants to serve bears little resemblance to the one Healey has been tagged with in the campaign. If that bothers Healey, she does not let it show
As her mother looked on, Healey offered a reporter a firm defense of her ads, arguing that they highlight important differences that "may be difficult or uncomfortable" but are nonetheless important for voters to consider.
Murphy said Healey was doted on from the moment she was born, a welcome surprise to her parents after 10 years of marriage.
"I guess we hovered over her because we were so thrilled to be near her," she said. "We wouldn't let a baby sitter get near her."
She described Healey as a creative child who loved to make up board games with her father. She was smart and hard-working at a young age, her mother said, insisting that the only time she can recall Healey being naughty as a child was when she broke a garage window while playing ball -- and immediately confessed to her mother.
Healey, listening to the story, turned and smiled. "I was wondering why you never fixed that window," she said.
"Because it reminded me of you," Murphy said. "It told me you were a good kid and I was a good mom." 