Leaving them cold

Two hundred and thirty women got together downtown for breakfast yesterday to talk about women and politics, and Kerry Healey's name never came up.

That is not good news for the Republican lieutenant governor whose campaign to succeed Governor Mitt Romney cannot win without the politically independent women she is driving away in droves. Trumpeting her fresh endorsement by the state's gun lobby is not going to lure them back.

It is hard to imagine what will.

The fear-mongering tactics perfected by male GOP candidates for the better part of two decades across this nation backfired on Healey weeks ago, and she seems to be the only one in Massachusetts who has not noticed. A WHDH-TV/Suffolk University survey of probable voters last week indicated that 50 percent of women prefer Deval Patrick to 30 percent for Healey. A WBZ poll gave Patrick, the Democratic nominee, a 36-point margin among probable female voters.

Healey's campaign strategy is inexplicable, given those numbers. Yesterday, with yet another gratuitous blast at illegal immigrants, she continued to throw red meat to the perpetually aggrieved male talk radio callers she has sewn up already. When does she plan to devote comparable attention to the more significant issues in education, health care, and the economy that are of much greater concern to the majority of female voters?

She may have already run out of time. Healey's name was on no one's lips at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast that considered how more women could be coaxed into running for elective office and win. If the discussion at the Four Seasons -- led by Gloria Larson, Barbara Lee, and former New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen -- focused on the future, it could be because Healey's campaign already looks like a case study in how to run and lose.

Women, no matter their political ideology or party affiliation, face challenges that do not confront male candidates. Shaheen, who now directs the Institute of Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said women must establish ``toughness credentials." The need simultaneously to project strength and femininity, toughness and compassion is a tall order. But in Healey's case, the lieutenant governor has confused being tough with being mean, and it has turned off the women she needs to win.

Saddest of all about Healey's formulaic candidacy is that it is more a creation of male political strategists than it is a reflection of the candidate herself. That is at the heart of why she is losing: There is nothing genuine about her campaign, and the voters know it. If she really supports civil unions for same-sex couples, why doesn't she deplore Romney's political exploitation of gay people? If she really believes that Romney has always opposed abortion, why did she run with him? If she really was Romney's designated point person on children's issues, why is the state Department of Social Services still underfunded and understaffed?

Romney's record is Healey's record, because she never has had the courage to step out from his shadow. Larson, who served in the Republican administration of Governor William F. Weld and now considers herself a political independent, told a revealing story about how she first became enamored with politics. In 1980, she was at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., working for Commissioner Patricia Bailey, who occasionally took exception to the Reagan administration's fervor for deregulation. ``We wrote a lot of dissenting opinions," Larson said, pointing out that Bailey's independence cost her the chairmanship of the FTC. The example taught Larson the importance of taking a principled stand, even at a political cost.

``It's so incredibly important for women to be at the table," Larson said, noting that her assistant at the law firm Foley Hoag recently was elected a selectwoman in Holbrook. ``I think it's a fabulous thing when women take up the calling."

Gloria Larson is supporting Deval Patrick for governor of Massachusetts.

Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.