Healey seen giving little help to other GOP hopefuls

Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, to be nominated for governor today by Republican convention delegates, is doing little to make sure the 2006 GOP ticket is filled out with credible candidates for other statewide offices, party sources and strategists said yesterday.

Healey has chosen to focus all her resources and energy on keeping the governor's office in GOP hands, those sources said, after watching Governor Mitt Romney's failed effort in 2004 to elect Republicans to the House and Senate. She has not expended significant energy to recruit contenders for the state's 200 state legislative seats, the strategists said, nor offered much political help in the challenge to US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who faces a challenge from two political newcomers.

The result: 2,500 delegates will gather at today's party convention in Lowell to endorse a ticket that, aside from Healey, is little-known and underfinanced.

The GOP has no candidate for secretary of state. The party is fielding two obscure political figures -- Lawrence Frisoli, a Cambridge lawyer and one-term city councilor, for attorney general, and business consultant Earle Stroll of Harvard for state auditor. Frisoli had $1,000 of his own money in his campaign bank account as of several weeks ago, campaign finance records show. Stroll reported having $200 in his account at the beginning of April.

Healey was not aware, as of a few days ago, of the party's latest recruit, Ron Davy, a one-term Hull selectman and financial analyst. During an interview with the Globe on Wednesday, she did not know his name or his background when asked about who the party was fielding against state Treasurer Tim Cahill, a first-term Democrat. She seemed equally unfamiliar with the two political novices trying to win the GOP's nomination to oppose Kennedy.

The party is faring no better at the legislative district level than it did in 2004, when it raised about $3 million and recruited about 130 candidates, some of them with impressive credentials and private resources. In the end, Romney's much-touted plans to turn around the GOP failed, with the party losing a net of three seats in the House and Senate.

Nonpartisan observers contend the quality of the statewide ticket reflects the continuing political problems and downward spiral of the Massachusetts Republican Party over the past three decades. They said the political turmoil engulfing President Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress will create another major drag this year.

''I can't remember a time when they have been this weak," said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University who has been observing Massachusetts since the early 1970s. He said Healey's strategy of focusing on her race is politically smart.

''I think it would be a pointless exercise, and she ought to husband her resources for the one race that the Republicans have an outside chance of winning," said Berry.

Tim O'Brien, Healey's campaign manager, acknowledged that the lieutenant governor's contribution to the election-year effort has been restricted to raising money and an infrastructure for the party. ''That is what is used to assist Republican candidates," he said. He said Healey has helped in recruitment of some legislative candidates and plans to help the statewide ticket once it is formed.

''Obviously we have our own campaign to run," O'Brien said. ''But we will do what we can for other candidates in the party to make sure they are elected in November."

On the eve of the convention in Lowell, party officials insisted that they are upbeat. They say they have about 100 candidates for the Legislature and are making predictions of regaining ground. The GOP now holds six of the 40 Senate districts and 20 seats in the 160-member House, the lowest numbers since the Civil War. Darrell Crate, the party chairman, said the GOP is in the process of putting a grass-roots network together that will pay off in the long term.

''We know it is a challenge, but we are doing things each day to build a stronger GOP in Massachusetts," Crate said.

Matt Wylie, the party's executive director, downplays the 2004 experience and is predicting that the Republicans can pick up ''five to 10 seats" this year. He says the party will be bolstered by what he predicts will be a strong showing by Healey that will draw both independents and Republicans to the polls.

Still, even Romney acknowledged the problems. He suggested the focus, in legislative races, should be on the quality of a few good candidates. ''We've been on a downhill slope ever since probably 1990," Romney told reporters on Monday. ''Every couple of years we lose another couple of seats in the Legislature, and that means we've got to do a better job as a party connecting with the voters of Massachusetts and encouraging more people to elect Republicans. So getting candidates isn't the answer. Getting people elected is."

Healey cites the experience in 2004 to explain why Republicans have had such a hard time this year in getting experienced, well-financed candidates to challenge Democratic incumbents.

''I think that it has been a challenge to convince people, certainly, to run against incumbents," she said. ''I think it's hard to recruit people to run against incumbents when oftentimes the impression is that incumbency is insuperable."

The political difficulties the party faces will be all the more evident today for Massachusetts Republican activists as they celebrate an iconic GOP figure of the past and hear a keynote address from a recently resigned White House chief of staff.

Former US senator Edward M. Brooke, the first African-American elected by popular vote to the Senate, will address the convention. An award has been created in his name. Andrew H. Card Jr., the former state legislator from Holbrook who just days ago resigned as White House chief of staff, will give the keynote address. He then is expected to be given the first Brooke Award.

The 86-year-old Brooke, who was defeated after two terms in 1978, represents an era when the party, led by moderates, dominated much of the state political scene. Card represents the end of that era when, in the 1970s, he joined the center of a band of feisty Republican lawmakers who, with liberal and reform-minded colleagues, battled Democratic House leaders.

''The convention would obviously like to call to mind when the Republicans were a strong force in the state and when the old Yankee Republicans were highly respected and voters had no problem in entrusting the government to them," Berry said.