Candidates prep for show time
DEBATE TONIGHT, 7 p.m. on Channels 2, 5, 7, NECN, and WBUR, is biggest event of campaign. With candidates bunched tighter than Katie Couric's nerves, winner of debate could be decisive.
Show time. Deval Patrick has to show he has something to offer tax-sensitive moderates. Chris Gabrieli has to show there's more to him than TV spots. Tom Reilly has to show he's not dead.
Taxes in the house. Reilly is going populist, as Democrats in trouble often do. Says he's only one favoring immediate rollback of state income tax because millionaire opponents don't care about $4-per-week savings. Patrick will say Reilly's flip-flopped, that Reilly opposed it last year. Gabrieli will say roll it back in stages; Reilly will say voters didn't ask for money back on installment plan. Rollback will be hottest issue, with Reilly and Gabby playing tag team on Patrick while trying to smack down each other.
Bad company. Regular guy Reilly will likely blast both opponents for corporate work, especially Patrick's for predatory lender Ameriquest. Over 15 years, Gabrieli's venture capital firm probably made some politically incorrect investments. Reilly will point them out. He'll also point out he's only candidate to make his tax returns public. Has claimed, dubiously, that he dropped Gabrieli as running mate because he wouldn't release tax returns. If Reilly was so worried about Gabrieli's taxes, how come he didn't ask Marie St. Fleur about hers?
Blowback. If Reilly pushes too hard, his opponents will give him facial on lax oversight of Big Dig, cutting saccharine deal with Bechtel, and accepting campaign money from Big Dig contractors. Reilly can't try to embrace Barbara Anderson without being shoved into arms of Bechtel.
Respect the voters. Indifference to voter concern on taxes could prevent Patrick from moving beyond liberal base. To get moderates, he has to respect voter discontent with Beacon Hill. After all, 45 percent of state voted to abolish state income tax in 2002. Recent Globe poll found 57 percent of current primary voters want income tax cut.
Gabrilocks. Gabrieli's new TV spot says Reilly and Kerry Healey want to roll back state income tax immediately. (Too hard.) Patrick doesn't want to change it at all. (Too soft.) But Chris Gabrilocks wants to roll it back in stages. (Just right.)
Throwing it down softly. At Labor Day breakfast, usually polite Patrick called Reilly ``bureaucrat" and Gabrieli ``technocrat." In he-started-it creed of campaigns, abused parties now feel right and obligation to escalate insults. Actually, insults are tip-off to where Patrick may be headed tonight.
Soft support. Rumblings are that Patrick support is stagnant because he's campaigning on who he is rather than what he'll do. Gabrieli could make play for soft Patrick voters by becoming Deval Light. ``All of the policies with none of the taxes." Similarly, Reilly will be trying to scrape antitax support off Gabrieli, arguing that Gabby publicly opposed rollback in 2000 and 2002.
How to win. Winning is being in lead paragraph in morning papers and having best sound bites on TV and radio. This means being, as political guru once said, ``appropriately aggressive." No points for being above it all -- unless other two are murdering each other.
Debates are often won by juiciest rejoinder. Every debate prep team can anticipate nearly all questions. No excuse for not having precisely timed, well-honed answers and comebacks. Remember Lloyd Bentsen's wicked reply to Dan Quayle posing as John Kennedy in 1988 vice presidential debate? It was scripted.
Scoring. Gabrieli has to reveal that he bleeds. Example: left medical school to rescue his father's failing software business. Needs to inspire, not come across as smartest kid in class.
Patrick doesn't need to replay his personal story; his TV spot does that. He's got to offer concrete benefits to those not in his cult. And when asked about wind farm or Big Dig, he shouldn't drift into sermon on hope.
Reilly's got to be like he is in new TV spot -- regular guy. No ahs and ums. And no brass knuckles. If debate and news coverage are mostly about taxes, score it for Reilly (or Gabrieli). If Patrick gets out of tax straitjacket, he wins.
Advice. Candidates, forget advice to do this, don't do that. Be a leader.
Dan Payne is a Boston-based media consultant who has worked for former governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts and, until November 2005, for candidate Deval Patrick. He also analyzes the governor's race for WBUR-FM. 