Candidates race for the finish line

The two leading candidates for governor, Democrat Deval L. Patrick and Republican Kerry Healey, barnstormed across Southeastern Massachusetts yesterday and continued to flood the state's airwaves with ads, trying to sweep up the last remaining undecided voters and fire up their ground troops to get supporters to the polls on Tuesday.

Patrick and Healey spent the day targeting their partisan strongholds and traditional voting blocs while also hitting their closing themes in the final push of a campaign that will break spending records while also electing the state's first woman or African-American as its governor.

At stake is whether voters will turn over the governor's office to the Democrats after 16 years of Republican dominance, a change that would create a major shift in the political balance on Beacon Hill.

Patrick, holding a comfortable lead in the polls, hosted rallies in Fall River and Brockton, two heavily Democratic areas, but also ventured into the Republican-leaning communities of Plymouth, Wareham, and East Bridgewater to appear with Democratic legislative candidates.

The Democratic candidate, who began his run for the governor's office 18 months ago as an unknown figure to the public and the political world, campaigned like a front-runner who is well aware of his wide lead in the polls. He ignored the barbs that Healey was continuing to throw at him and instead set a tone that reflected a candidate who felt he is on the verge of a major victory.

Appearing at a Fall River rally, he told supporters that they are "just within reach of taking back our future and shaping it ourselves."

"I'm not interested anymore in what Kerry Healey has to say," Patrick, who wore a suit, tie, and white shirt, told the mostly blue-collar crowd. "All I'm interested in is what you care about. All I'm interested in is what you are worried about and . . . in how I can help. To me, that is all that matters."

Patrick later stopped at Wareham High School to endorse a candidate for state representative, Margaret Ishihara . As Patrick left the building, he was swarmed by well-wishers.

"I've been with you since day one," said Eddie Ellis, 81, of Wareham, who was wearing a US Merchant Marine cap and walking with a cane. "There's a bunch of crooks up there. We need a change."

Healey, traveling with her mother, Shirley Murphy, and her running mate, Reed Hillman, met supporters in restaurants and diners in Walpole, Braintree, Marshfield, and Brockton, and wrapped up the day in Hyannis. All her stops targeted the bloc of voters she needs for a victory -- Republicans and conservative Democrats and independents. Today she will campaign in Methuen, Wakefield, and the North End, which have similar voter profiles. Tomorrow she is scheduled to campaign with Governor Mitt Romney, and is expected to tour Worcester County.

Brushing aside the polls, Healey appeared upbeat yesterday. Her aides said that she was gaining ground now that voters are more focused on the election.

A Boston Globe/CBS4 polls of likely voters published 10 days ago showed Patrick with a 25 percentage-point lead, with independent Christy Mihos and Green-Rainbow Party candidate Grace Ross trailing far behind her.

"What I feel right now out on the street is a lot of folks thinking, they're thinking," she told a room of some 80 supporters at George's Cafe, an Italian restaurant in Brockton. Referring to Patrick, she said, "I think we all started out hearing someone who was very well-spoken, very inspirational, who spoke in terms of hope, and making people feel good. And that goes only so far."

The cafe's owner, Charlie Tartaglia, gave Healey a T-shirt emblazoned with a postage stamp celebrating Brockton-born boxer Rocky Marciano. He told her to wear it on Election Day to celebrate her "knock out."

"It will be a knock out," Healey told him. "That's what we're going to do."

Healey's optimism was fed by fired-up supporters at every stop. Earlier that morning, as she arrived at the Westbury Farms Family Restaurant in a small Walpole shopping center, 70-year-old Patricia Collins of Dover was one of about 60 supporters there to greet her. "It's going to be the greatest upset we've ever had," Collins told her.

"It'll be a great story, won't it?" Healey said with a smile.

As she settled into a booth for scrambled eggs and sausages, Mark Lemieux, a 49-year-old unenrolled voter from Walpole who was eating breakfast with his 12-year-old son, Dan, at the counter, said he planned to vote for Healey, reciting the theme the lieutenant governor has been emphasizing in the last few days.

"I think we need a two-party system in this state, and I think she'll do a great job," he said. "She's got the experience, and we need somebody to keep the Democratic House and Senate in check."

Wherever she went, Healey tried to hammer home the message that she is the only candidate with a plan to make Massachusetts more affordable, and the people's best hope for balanced government on Beacon Hill. She described Patrick as a tax-and-spend Democrat who had proposed $8 billion in new spending with no way to pay for it.

"He's either not going to live up to his promises, or he's going to tax you guys back to the Stone Age," she told supporters at the Brockton restaurant.

But Patrick strategists, bolstered by the polls, are trying to keep their candidate above the fray. They are also sending Patrick on a final tour of the state through some communities and areas that have voted Republican in past races for governor. Today he will hold a rally in Lowell, where conservative Democrats have backed GOP candidates in the past.

Patrick is counting heavily on a field organization that his strategist said gave him the overwhelming victory in September's primary election. His aides said campaign volunteers are making 40,000 telephone calls a night and plan to contact some 760,000 households on Election Day.

But he is also airing an upbeat ad that shows scenes of him greeting and addressing supporters at a Boston Common rally he held several weeks ago as clips of newspaper editorial endorsements from around the state flash on the screen.

Healey's final ad campaign appears aimed at moderate voters and those voters who may be willing to reconsider their support of Patrick. One ad features former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani offering a strong endorsement. The other shows a man running in the street, pondering his doubts about Patrick.

Mihos, who has spent $3 million of his own money in television ads but hasn't found the traction in the race that he had hoped for, spent yesterday morning on three talk-radio programs and then dropped by a church bazaar in Watertown. He had no other public events for the rest of the day.

Ross's schedule put her at a rally at the Dudley Square MBTA station and at a function at a Lynn church last night.

Lisa Wangsness and Andrea Estes of the Globe staff contributed to this report.