Say `cheese' for your opponent's camera

Deval Patrick was standing outside Medford High School on Tuesday morning, preparing to introduce his education plan, when his eyes fell on the man his aides had warned him about: the dark-haired, clean-cut young man off to the right, filming him with a hand-held digital video camera.

``Are you Steve? Come on up, man," Patrick said, with a huge smile. ``I want to introduce Steve, from the Reilly campaign."

The crowd of sign-holding Patrick supporters laughed and cheered. Steve Fleming, the 27-year-old volunteer for Thomas F. Reilly, grinned sheepishly.

``Relax, OK?" Patrick said.

Fleming was on hand to catalog Patrick's every utterance. Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey's campaign has dispatched another crew to do much the same. Patrick and Christy Mihos say they have no intention of taping their opponents; Christopher Gabrieli's people say he is undecided.

Filming opponents has been a standard tactic for ages, but technology is making it easier than ever to use clips strategically. The Healey campaign, for example, has a growing video database with clips sorted by subject, so staffers can retrieve quotes in seconds.

Among the Healey videotapers is a paid intern named Brad Easterbrooks , 21 , a senior at Boston College from Carlsbad, Calif., who is the editor-in-chief of The Boston College Observer , a conservative student newspaper.

``Some of the candidates, they like being videotaped; others, not so much," he said.

Count Mihos in the latter category. At a housing forum in Roxbury earlier this month, Mihos flashed several irritated grins at the camera when he caught sight of Easterbrooks. A bit later, he stopped speaking with a voter, turned toward the camera, smiled for several seconds, and then hissed, ``Had enough?" Finally, he ordered an aide to block Easterbrooks' view.

Other candidates take it in stride. After Easterbrooks was through with Mihos at the Roxbury forum, he moved over to shoot a little footage of Patrick, who was speaking with voters and reporters. Patrick pleasantly asked Easterbrooks who he was working for ``so I can wave to them." He asked Easterbrooks what his name was. The intern put his camera down and shook the candidate's hand.

``He has such a nice smile," Patrick said, as Easterbrooks resumed filming. ``He's so uncomfortable. It's all right."

Lisa Wangsness

A dispute over Gabrieli's e-mail list

To qualify for the primary ballot, Christopher Gabrieli's campaign pulled out all the stops to reach delegates to the Democratic state convention earlier this month. But rival Deval Patrick's campaign and some Patrick delegates question how Gabrieli got private e-mail addresses that delegates provided to the state party but were not supposed to be made available to the campaigns.

Before the convention, Patrick campaign manager John Walsh complained to Philip Johnston , the state party chairman.

Johnston said it was ``ridiculous" to think that Gabrieli had access to party data. ``We play this totally straight," Johnston said.

He said Patrick's campaign had ``some suspicion because a former staff person of the party is now working for Gabrieli."

``We looked into it and didn't find any evidence that [the e-mail list] was purloined," Johnston said.

Gabrieli campaign spokesman Dan Cence flatly denied any collusion. ``We in no way, shape, or form had any access to proprietary e-mails from the party," he said. The campaign purchased 239,000 Massachusetts e-mail addresses from a commercial vendor in New York and scoured party and other websites for possible matches with delegates, he said.

But Cence said he could not determine how the campaign got the private e-mail addresses of Dianne Gamson of Fall River and Helen Swartz of Brookline, both Patrick supporters who said they gave their addresses only to the party. Moreover, neither address includes any combination of letters even remotely resembling their first or last names, so they could not be identified from a computer match of delegate names and a commercial list.

``The only time I gave my e-mail address for any political endeavor is when I became a Democratic delegate in February," and then to Patrick's campaign in May, Gamson told the Globe. She said she began receiving e-mails from Gabrieli on April 26.

Brian C. Mooney

Mihos has a race on his hands

Six weeks.

That's all the time independent Christy Mihos and running mate John J. Sullivan have to scoop up enough signatures to make the gubernatorial ballot in November. Because Mihos and Sullivan are running as a ticket, together they must gather John Hancocks from 10,000 voters by Aug. 1.

It's tougher to collect names during the summer because there aren't town elections or town meetings where a campaign can sign up scores of voters at a time. But Mihos campaign manager Carolyn Kain said they started 10 days ago using both volunteers and paid signature-gatherers, and are doing quite well.

``We're very confident that we're going to get them," Kain said.

``Can they do it? Yes," said Secretary of State William F. Galvin, whose office oversees elections. ``But [Mihos] is going to have to hustle."

Scott Helman

To contact the Globe's political team, e-mail us at masspolitics@globe.com. Check out the Globe's political blog, Political Intelligence, at www.boston.com/politics.