Johnston known for outspokenness

When he announced his candidacy for Congress a decade ago, Philip W. Johnston cast aside the moderate, measured speech his consultant had written for him. Instead, he delivered a fiery diatribe against Newt Gingrich, talked about saving the planet from nuclear holocaust, and promised to speak for the dispossessed.

``I'm not going to run away from what I believe," he told reporters that day. ``I know it's not fashionable to say you're a liberal. But that's what I am. And I'm proud of it."

Yesterday, Johnston's outspokenness was again the center of attention, after he accused Republican Kerry Healey of coming close to ``race-baiting." He later said he went too far, but the episode was an unwelcome distraction for Democrat Deval Patrick in the first week of the general election campaign for governor.

Some Democrats, publicly and privately, grumbled that Johnston had overstepped his role as chairman, which is primarily meant to raise money, organize the party, and attack Republicans.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino called Johnston's remark ``totally not called for" and said, ``Deval Patrick can speak for himself."

Patrick also distanced himself from the remark, saying Johnston does not speak for him.

But Johnston's allies defended him as a liberal idealist who is deeply committed to social justice and who could not contain his moral outrage at Healey's aggressive rhetoric on immigration, crime, and taxes on election night. His friends said they shared his indignation, even if they agreed he went too far.

``Phil is an idealist. Phil is somebody who believes that public service is meant to uplift people's lives," said Steve Grossman, who has served as chairman of the state and national Democratic Party. ``I think Phil believes politics and public service are honorable professions and that the candidates should speak to people's highest aspirations and dreams and values, not gravitate toward the lowest common denominator."

Former governor Michael S. Dukakis, who hired Johnston to serve as his health and human services secretary during his second and third terms, agreed.

``Nobody ever accused Phil of not being a guy that spoke his mind," he said. ``He probably overstepped, but the fact remains that we know exactly what kind of campaign these people are going to run."

Johnston's liberal politics date to the late 1950s, when, as a teenager, he became involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and participated in civil rights marches. At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, he was head of Students for Civil Rights. In 1969, he founded the Robert F. Kennedy Children's Action Corps, a Boston-based organization that helps abused and neglected children.

Trained as a social worker, Johnston was a state representative from 1975 to 1983, becoming a leading opponent of Dukakis's social services budget cuts in the mid-1970s. But he mended fences with the governor after he lost his race for reelection. After helping Dukakis retake the governor's office in 1982, Johnston left the Legislature to join Dukakis's Cabinet, first as director of human resources and later as secretary of health and human services.

After Dukakis left office in 1991, Johnston served two years as executive director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial in Washington and then joined the Clinton administration as the New England director of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Never a fan of more restrictive welfare regulations, he left that office in 1996 to run for Congress. He ran a low-budget, grass-roots campaign against the better-known and better-funded Norfolk district attorney, William D . Delahunt. Johnston was declared the winner of that election until a court-ordered recount reversed the outcome.

As party chairman, Johnston had not been known as a bomb-thrower, but his unabashed liberalism has caused friction among members of the party's conservative wing. Under his leadership, the party has committed to supporting gay marriage, and Johnston has promoted minority candidates in primaries.

After the 2002 election, some moderate Democrats called on Johnston to resign, labeling his beliefs outside the mainstream. They also blamed him for a disorganized nominating convention that year and for failing to make sure that the party's nominee had money to spend on ads after a contentious primary.

Nominee Shannon O'Brien finished the primary nearly broke and unable to compete with Republican Mitt Romney in television advertising in the opening weeks of the general election.

This year, Johnston has raised $1 million since January in hope of avoiding that problem and this week helped gather 170 fund-raisers from the campaigns of Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly and Christopher Gabrieli to raise more money for Patrick.

Johnston declined to comment. Cyndi Roy, a spokeswoman for the party, said the idea that Johnston preferred Patrick ``could not be further from the truth."

``At the end of the day, we're already working with people who worked for Gabrieli and Reilly's campaigns," she said, ``so despite the grumbling, the mission was accomplished, basically."