Dem Leads in Battle of Alums

A series of negative advertisements used by the campaign of Republican Kerry M. Healey ’82 against Deval L. Patrick ’78 in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race has backfired in the past week, resulting in an increase in the Democratic candidate’s numbers in the polls.

According to a poll published on Oct. 24 by 7NEWS and Suffolk University, 53 percent of likely voters now support Patrick, as opposed to 26 percent in favor of Healey. In addition, 61 percent of people surveyed criticized the negative tone that Healey’s campaign has taken in recent weeks.

The ads under fire attack Patrick, a former Dunster House resident, for his soft stance on crime by drawing on the Democratic candidate’s involvement in the cases of Carl Ray Songer, who killed a patrolman in Florida, and Benjamin LaGuer, a convicted rapist.

Specifically, Healey, an alum of South House, now Cabot, has criticized Patrick for overturning Songer’s death sentence when the candidate was a lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and for aiding and donating money for a DNA test in the LaGuer case.

To criticize Patrick’s support of criminals, Healey’s campaign broadcasted an ad portraying a young girl being stalked by a rapist that ended with the announcement “Deval Patrick should be ashamed. Not Governor.”

Though the ads initially helped Healey, who saw her numbers rise in the polls, a backlash soon followed. Voters have since criticized her campaign for going too far in its negative attack and, in polls, have said they were offended by the tone of the ads.

“The ad, as vicious as we’ve seen this cycle, is the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass,” Washington Post columnist Chris Cillizza wrote on his blog, referring to the one denouncing Patrick’s involvement in the LaGuer case.

As a result of the negative advertisement campaign, Healey’s support plummeted last week from the 33 percent she held in the Oct. 12 7NEWS/Suffolk poll to 26 percent, while Patrick’s numbers climbed from 46 percent to 53 percent.

Political observer and editor of the Cambridge Civic Journal, Robert Winters, credited Patrick’s success in the polls with his campaign’s swift response to the ads and Healey’s failure to follow up with positive ads about herself.

“If you didn’t couple that with a continue campaign especially one that would portray Healey in a positive light as opposed to Patrick in a negative light, it wasn’t really going to lead to any long term gains,” Winters said yesterday.

Winters added that Patrick’s reputation as a “mister good guy” allowed the candidate to “take the high road.”

Winters also said that he thinks this year’s gubernatorial campaign has shown the power of Patrick’s broad-based volunteer efforts in contrast to Healey’s “wholesale campaign,” which has focused mainly on broadcast ads. ­

Patrick’s campaign has given him a solid gain the polls, Winters said, who added that he was that this success would continue to election day.

“Patrick has this pretty clearly locked up, which actually kind of remarkable considering how little people know about the guy,” Winters said.

—Staff writer Claire M. Guehenno can be reached at guehenno@fas.harvard.edu.