Democrats vying for No. 2 spot like-minded

One ditched a fledgling career on Wall Street and moved to Costa Rica with a backpack and no job and then networked with her Harvard connections to land a job in international economic development.

Another put himself through law school at night while substitute teaching and later became Worcester's youngest mayor when he was elected five years ago.

And a third worked for years at the Stop & Shop supermarket chain her family founded, before chairing the Brookline Board of Selectmen during an economic downturn.

Andrea Silbert, Timothy P. Murray, and Deborah Goldberg, the three Democrats running for lieutenant governor, have diverse backgrounds, but strikingly similar positions on the issues. All oppose the death penalty, support abortion rights, oppose an income tax rollback, and back same-sex marriage. Instead, they are emphasizing their experience as they woo delegates for support at the party's nominating convention this weekend.

``They're all interesting, serious, knowledgeable people with strong resumes," said Philip W. Johnston, the Democratic Party chairman. ``Each brings a different life experience to the race and would complement the gubernatorial nominee in different ways. I think it depends on who the gubernatorial nominee is, in terms of how well the matchup will go in the fall."

A fourth Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, Sam Kelley, dropped out of the race last week.

The candidates need 15 percent of the support of delegates next week to win a spot on the Sept. 19 ballot. The winner of the September primary will face Republican Reed V. Hillman in the Nov. 7 election.

Deborah Goldberg draws heavily on experience in two disparate worlds: her family's Stop & Shop supermarket empire and her work on the Brookline Board of Selectmen.

``It's a people business that I came from," Goldberg said. ``Politics is relationships, and at Stop & Shop, it was about our employees, our customers, our communities."

Elected to the Brookline Board of Selectmen in 1998, she served three terms, including one as chairwoman from 2002 to 2004. During her tenure, she says, the town balanced its budget well enough to not only avoid a property tax override -- which so many other towns are now using, as they try to make up for lost state aid -- but to avoid layoffs and to renovate schools.

Highly critical of Governor Mitt Romney and Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, Goldberg proposed to do more to attract businesses and work with existing company leaders to help them remain in Massachusetts.

``There has been no real effort in marketing Massachusetts or directly connecting with the range of business owners . . . to say, `What are your needs?' " Goldberg said.

She pitches regional task forces that would connect community colleges with companies to coordinate their training and prepare students for direct recruiting. ``There is incredible potential. It has been so untapped," she said.

Goldberg has put $1.1 million of her own money into her campaign.

Murray, the mayor of Worcester, has the home court advantage for the party's convention at the Worcester DCU Center, and has an established base of voters.

His campaign has picked up dozens of endorsements from party players, from US Representatives James P. McGovern and Richard E. Neal to 51 state legislators and 15 city or town mayors.

The man who wrote up a ``municipal bill of rights," calling for a ``right to expect fulfillment of state's obligation to education" and other measures, aims to be the voice of local politicians who feel marginalized by the Romney administration.

``The governor and the lieutenant governor are going to say they haven't raised taxes; that is a complete red herring," Murray said. ``They have shifted the burden to the property tax. Property tax under the Romney-Healey administration have gone up, on average, 35 percent across the state. And the property tax is the most regressive tax that there is."

As such, he calls for restoring local aid to FY 2002 levels and, like the other candidates, resists the plan to roll back the state income tax to 5 percent, as voters called for in a 2000 referendum.

Murray, the grandson of a labor leader and the child of a guidance counselor and a nurse, grew up in a family where politics was paramount.

He ran his first race, for City Council, in 1997, and four years later became the youngest mayor ever elected in Worcester. (The city's mayor is popularly elected, but the post is largely ceremonial for the at-large council candidate who draws the greatest number of votes for mayor.)

He quickly ruffled some feathers by ousting the former city manager, who runs the city's day-to-day affairs, and bringing in new leadership. Since then, he has been trying to forge partnerships with the business community and universities and to foster economic development, including a plan to replace a shopping mall with an open-air village of shops near commuter rail.

Andrea Silbert boasts an uncommon resume: After two years working on Wall Street, she deferred her acceptance to Harvard Business School and left the country with a backpack and no job. As she tells it, she networked with her Harvard College connections until she found a job at a business school in Costa Rica, writing case studies and researching industries.

Afterward, she enrolled at Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government, where she became concerned about the feminization of poverty and spent two years working with prostitutes and other street girls in Brazil. Later, she and a partner founded the Center for Women and Enterprise in Roxbury, helping women with business ideas to launch or expand their own companies.

``People always say, `Oh, it must be so hard running for office,' " Silbert said. ``I know hard. I worked with street girls in Brazil. I started a nonprofit in Roxbury. I can handle hard."

Some of the center's clients are welfare recipients or other low-income women trying to get a business idea off the ground or even just to learn how to balance their limited budgets.

Others are already successful entrepreneurs seeking venture capital to expand. Silbert said that iRobot Corp., the Burlington, Mass., robotics maker, got the center help with a venture capital presentation in raising $13 million to launch the Roomba, a self-operated vacuum cleaner.

Unlike her competitors in the race, Silbert has no significant financial resources or name recognition to draw upon.

Her husband is an artist with a small graphic design business, and the couple intends to send their three children, all under 6, to public school.

However, she has experience in lobbying for women's business centers both in the State House and in Washington. And after she left the center two years ago, she helped fund-raising efforts for US Senator John F. Kerry, helping his presidential campaign raise $450,000.