Gubernatorial hopefuls scramble for advantage

The three Democratic candidates for governor fanned out across Massachusetts yesterday, grasping at anything they thought might help them in the closing days of the primary campaign.

Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, trailing in some recent polls, seized on a remark Christopher F. Gabrieli made in an interview with the Globe editorial board recently , in which Gabrieli compared Springfield to Detroit to make a point about suburban flight and the state's fragmented municipal governments.

``The towns around Springfield are doing fine. Springfield is Detroit. It's just the city is being abandoned for the nearby suburbs," Gabrieli told the editorial board.

Reilly, a Springfield native, jumped on the statement.

``Just because Springfield is more economically diverse than Louisburg Square doesn't mean it's a bad city or something to mock," he said, citing the tony slice of Beacon Hill where Gabrieli lives. ``I'm proud of my home city. I believe in its future, and what it needs is a governor who cares about Springfield, not another out-of-touch governor who mocks it."

Dan Cence, a Gabrieli spokesman, dismissed the criticism.

``Tom Reilly is offering nothing but pathetic attacks," Cence said in a statement. Gabrieli ``wants to attract companies from overseas to set up US operations here in Massachusetts, and he wants to help revitalize the economy of Springfield," he said.

Springfield, the state's third-largest city, with about 152,000 residents, has lost about 5,000 people since 1990. Its finances have been placed under the auspices of an independent control board.

Gabrieli, meanwhile, launched two new radio advertisements rebutting a television commercial for Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, a Republican, that began airing Thursday. Healey's advertisement asserts that Gabrieli could enrich himself through his plan to invest $1 billion in stem cell research and other life sciences.

``Days before the Democratic primary, Kerry Healey is attacking Chris Gabrieli," says a female announcer in one of Gabrieli's new ads, titled ``Best Hope." ``Newspapers call Healey's ad ridiculous, outrageous, and ham-handed. If her ad isn't true, why is Healey attacking Gabrieli? She doesn't want to face him in November."

Greeting voters at a diner in Fall River, Gabrieli stressed that, if elected, he plans to divest from any of his biotech stocks, and called the idea that he is running for governor to make himself richer ``laughable."

``It's just not an issue," Gabrieli said, in the midst of a daylong swing that took him from a school in New Bedford to an inn in Quincy. ``I think what is an issue is why is the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts once again willing to take something that's very important to people -- stem cell research -- and turn it into an attack instrument?"

Meanwhile, Patrick, ahead in some recent polls, took some heat yesterday from the Massachusetts Nurses Association, a union of 23,000 nurses, for questioning a bill that would mandate nurse-to-patient ratios in the state's hospitals. During Wednesday's televised gubernatorial debate, Patrick called the ratios ``very hard for me to imagine actually legislating."

``Nurses are up in arms over his comments, and they are not letting him slide on what can only be perceived by nurses as a blatant disregard for patient safety," said Donna Kelly-Williams, a pediatric nurse at the Cambridge Health Alliance and union vice president.

Patrick said he believed there must be some middle ground.

``I said to the MNA that I think the original bill that they proposed I could not support because I couldn't really understand how you could legislate nursing ratios," he said during a visit to the Charlestown Boys and Girls Club yesterday. ``I've also told them that the compromise they worked out with the hospitals I could support."