The state of the Bay State - Massachusetts congressional candidates

National Review, Sept 21, 1984 by Richard Brookhiser

BEING A Republican in Massachusetts is not exactly illegal. But it is also not particularly honorable or, for a politician, useful. Decriminalized maybe captures the flavor. Registered Republicans account for 15 per cent of the electorate, a dim third behind Democrats and Independents. The last Republican elected statewide was Edward Brooke, who lost his Senate seat in 1978. Reagan carried the state in 1980, but only because John Anderson ran super-strong there, and even then his margin was less than three thousand votes.

The scraps are hotly disputed nevertheless. Six years ago, the nominations for governor and senator were sharply contested, and there was another fight for the gubernatorial nomination in 1982. About the only thing that was free for the asking was the privilege of running against the almighty himself, Ted Kennedy. The lucky man turned out to be a first-time candidate, Raymond Shamie, who was, of course, trounched, though by a smaller margin--61 to 38 per cent--than any other opponent since Kennedy's first election. Now Shamie wants another crack at the Senate.

Two years ago, he was short, greying, genial, and I suspect basically reserved. Today there is a little more salt in amongst the pepper, but the rest still holds. Two years ago, also, he campaigned like an amateur. The behavior of other politicians, who molt illusions as snakes shed skins, seemed genuinely to surprise and shock him. Teddy, for instance, was ducking a debate. But how could that be? Didn't he want to discuss issues? (Shamie offered $10,000 to anyone who could manage to set up a contest, and hired airplanes to trail the message over Patriots games and other public events. Kennedy finally conceded.) "I used to think," he now says, "if I made a speech, everybody would see, and come aboard. Unfortunately, most people aren't listening. They have jobs, families, personal concerns. Do they have to run the government too? They hire a candidate and expect he'd run it as they would. Personal appeal counts more than issues, I'm sorry to say. I wish it weren't true." He tapped my knee for emphasis (we were on our way to an appearance). "It would be a different country if every citizen were to devote thirty minutes a day to serious reading. It would be a different world."

So he has changed. And not changed. He was born in 1921, in Brooklyn; his father was Syrian, by way of Canada, and his mother was French. When Ray was 16, his father died in an accident, and Ray drove a truck to support the family. Later on, he invented a precision pump, which his employers at the time weren't interested in. So he started his own company, Metal Bellows, and is now a millionaire. (Kennedy, of course, could buy and sell him; we're not talking about the very rich). Since 1982, he has set up another company, Infusaid, to produce an implantable pump that injects drugs into the bloodstream. (The technology came from aerospace; Metal Bellows supplied two hundred parts for the space shuttle.) The pump is currently being tested at Dartmouth for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

Shamie announced his candidacy in November. The incumbent was Paul Tsongas, the man who beat Brooke. He would probably have been as tough an opponent as Kennedy--a supple liberal, without the name, but also without the negatives. Still, Shamie was gung-ho. Then in January, Tsongas, suffering from lymphatic cancer, pulled out of the race.

Shamie went, after taping a cable talk show, to a dinner of supporters at a fish place on the North Shore--the rubber-haddock circuit. He campaigns as a forthright Reaganite. His big issue is taxes, and he took on Walter Mondale's pledge to raise them. "It's a crazy idea. When has raising taxes ever lowered deficit?" He recalled sly old Bob Dole, promising in 1982 that the tax rise would help dig us out of the red. No such luck. "If you give money to Washington, they don't apply it to deficits, they spend it. That's history speaking." Shamie also supports a balanced-budget amendment, the line-item veto, and a flat tax.

He had taken his medical pump--about the size of a hockey puck--along to the taping, and as he finished, he showed it again. "All this comes out of private enterprise." It's his biography, and his credo.

Tsongas's withdrawal encouraged a second Republican hopeful. (The primary will be on September 18.) If a scriptwriter had been asked to supply a foil for Shamie, he would not have dared to create one as extreme as Elliot Richardson.

Richardson had been out of the state for 15 years, so he has programmed a busy schedule for himself. He is not a born campaigner. He talks like Dylan Thomas's imitation of T. S. Eliot, and his body language when he goes in for a handshake--both knees slightly bent--suggests that he yearns secretly for the quick getaway. He works hard, though, and looks in every eye.

He started a day working Merrimack Street in Lowell. One of the first eyes, alas, belonged to a drunk. He had something on his mind. "All those resources in the world, y'know?" It sounded like the Law of the Sea treaty, but Richardson demurred: "Well then, there'd be government interference." Things picked up further down the street. At the door of an old textile plant, now taken over by the National Park Service, he was interviewed for a local TV station.