Doubts are voiced on Healey tactics

With Kerry Healey trailing in the polls, some Massachusetts Republicans are beginning to second-guess the campaign's strategy and the decision to air widely criticized advertisements focused on crime.

The criticism comes as Healey's running mate, Reed Hillman, appears to be distancing himself from Healey's most controversial ad, which highlighted Democrat Deval L. Patrick's advocacy for convicted rapist Benjamin LaGuer. Healey, meanwhile, said yesterday that it was the news media, not her campaign, that brought intense attention to Patrick's positions on crime.

Todd Domke, a media strategist who advised the National Republican Congressional Committee in the early 1990s, said that Healey's failure to define herself positively before the September primary meant that her attack ads sculpted her image instead, leaving voters with the impression that her tone is "overly negative."

"I would say that strategic blunders by her handlers have left her with no good options," he said.

In an interview with the Associated Press yesterday, Healey defended the ads that focus on the Democratic nominee's advocacy on behalf of convicted rapist Benjamin LaGuer. One, which features a woman walking alone in a parking garage, has drawn national attention for its negativity.

Healey said she never intended that so much attention be paid to the ad.

"The media has spent too much time focusing on this one issue, and therefore we as a campaign have ended up spending more time talking about this one issue than about . . . the many other substantive issues," Healey told the Associated Press.

"Certainly, in terms of my personal themes in the ads, I spent a whole lot more time talking about taxes than I did about crime," she said, adding that there has been "an exaggerated notion of the amount of time we as a campaign . . . devoted to this."

Two days before, Hillman criticized the campaign's media strategy on a cable television show in Worcester.

"I think our advertising spent a little too much time on Benjamin LaGuer and not enough time on the issues like, you know, the fact that income taxes are going to go up significantly under Deval Patrick," Hillman told "Worcester News Tonight" reporter Jennifer Roy.

Hillman later retreated from the statement, saying he had meant to say that "so much time had been dedicated to the discussion around the ads, instead of focusing on Patrick's outrageous behavior to free a convicted rapist and his continued refusal to take specific stands on key issues."

Healey's campaign strategists insist that she has been hurt not by her own ads, but rather by an onslaught of negative commercials sponsored by Patrick and by independent groups backing him, such as the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

A Healey strategist said the campaign spent only about $150,000 on the parking garage ad, only a tiny fraction of the total amount she has spent on television advertising since the primary, more than $4.8 million.

After last night's debate, Healey seemed buoyed by her performance, telling reporters that voters were finally focusing on the race and realizing they prefer her platform for low taxes, high educational standards and not giving illegal immigrants driver's licenses or in-state tuition at public universities.

"We're moving forward and I can feel the momentum," she said. "I think you could feel it here tonight."

Yesterday, Healey began running a new, positive spot featuring former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani that does not mention Patrick at all. Tim O'Brien, Healey's campaign manager, said it was part of the campaign's "closing argument."

In the ad, Giuliani says Healey can provide "leadership for change," an apparent effort to distance Healey from Governor Mitt Romney. "Republicans and Democrats must work together to get things done, and Kerry Healey has what it takes to provide the effective balance that is so critical," Giuliani tells viewers in the ad.

Former state treasurer Joseph D. Malone lost a Republican gubernatorial primary in 1998 to Paul Cellucci, whose media consultant, Stuart Stevens, is now handling Healey's media.

In a phone interview yesterday, Malone said Healey should also not have had to debate the three other candidates on the ballot at once, because it meant that 75 percent of the live audiences would oppose her and that their reaction would influence viewers' perception of her performance.

Malone called Healey's parking garage ad "very high-risk," and he said that sending campaign workers to Patrick's home dressed in orange prison jumpsuits only seemed to validate accusations that Healey was "going over the line."

"Deval Patrick's comment that she is much better than her campaign, I think, rings true," he said. "I have great respect for Kerry Healey, but the campaign has done her a disservice."