THE KERRY HEALEY CAMPAIGN:

MUDSLINGING AT ITS BEST

Negative campaign ads are nothing new. When John Quincy Adams ran for president in 1828 against Andrew Jackson, he hit Jackson below the belt with a vicious personal attack. The Adams campaign distributed pamphlets that claimed that Jackson’s mother was a prostitute brought to the country by British soldiers. The literature also claimed that Jackson’s mother married “a mulatto man,” with whom she had several children, including Jackson. In spite of the mudslinging, Jackson went on to win the election.

Negative campaign ads that stretch the truth, use racist tactics and have diminished standards of decency have been around for centuries. It is arguable that the all-time most effective negative ad was in the 1988 presidential campaign, when Vice President George Bush began airing commercials against his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, criticizing a weekend furlough program for felons supported by Dukakis. The ads detailed how Willie Horton, a Black man serving a life sentence without parole for murder in Massachusetts, committed a rape and armed robbery while on furlough. The ads showed Horton's mug shot. Dukakis argued that the furlough program was effective at helping to rehabilitate inmates, but many political observers believe the ads helped clinch the election for Bush.

It seems that Republican Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey has taken a page out of former President Bush’s playbook as she desperately attempts to close the gap between herself and Democrat Deval Patrick in the contest for governor of Massachusetts. In the weeks since the September primary elections, Healey has slung more than her fair share of mud. She has claimed that as governor, Deval Patrick will raise taxes and raise spending, and will undo some of the progress on tougher criminal-justice laws that have occurred in Massachusetts over the past decade. She has called him a “liar” concerning his advocacy on behalf of a Black man convicted of rape and has run ads saying that he defended an “admitted cop killer” and got his sentenced reduced.

The problem with Healey’s negative ads is that they stretch the truth far beyond recognition. The Florida man accused of killing a police officer had his sentence reduced from the death penalty to life in prison. Unlike Healey’s ad suggests, he is not eligible for parole. As a defense attorney who is against the death penalty, Patrick performed a service that every human being has a right to--to be defended in a court of law.

In the face of negative campaign ads with racist overtones, Deval Patrick has remained a class act. His campaign has set the record straight without going negative. Patrick built his campaign around a theme of replacing cynicism in government with hope for the future, a message that he refused to undercut in the wake of Healey’s “Horton-ess” strategy. Most of Healey’s ads have been negative as opposed to comparative. They attacked Patrick’s character as opposed to drawing distinctions between the two candidates. Her claims that Patrick is “soft on crime” almost inferred that he wanted rapists and pillagers to live in our neighborhoods. It is unfortunate that after nearly four years as lieutenant governor, Healey had no positive message to run on and had no choice but to go on the attack against Patrick.

In just a few days we will go to the polls to decide who the next governor of Massachusetts will be. Hopefully, the candidates’ stands on the issues that are important to us will influence us more than race baiting and negativity. n