ON POLITICS

Bandwagon From Texas Stops Again For Cellucci

By Frank Phillips and Scot Lehigh, Globe Staff, February 8, 1999

It's the Boston-to-Austin connection in reverse.

Since winning election in his own right in November, Governor Paul Cellucci has caught what may be Massachusetts' first case of Vicarious Potomac Fever.

In phone calls and face-to-face conversations, Cellucci has made and reiterated an ironclad commitment to Texas Governor George W. Bush.

If Bush -- George W., in GOP-speak -- runs for president, Cellucci will be with him. Not with him a little, not with him halfway, but with him till the last dog dies, as those southern governors like to say.

"I was down there for his inaugural, and I told him I would help him out if he runs," Cellucci said recently. "I think he's going to run. I think he has a sense of duty about it."

But that's more than just one old friend helping another; a Bush campaign fits neatly into Cellucci's own plans to rebuild the Massachusetts Republican Party -- and, some think, could create a potential exit strategy from Beacon Hill to a possible Cabinet job in Washington.

Cellucci, lacking former Governor Weld's whimsical charisma but possessing a keen political instinct, has decided one way to enhance his own stature is to bulk up his political muscle. And so, since his November victory, he has moved with alacrity to create a machine.

How serious is he? Cellucci plans to have five to seven political aides and fund-raisers full time on his campaign payroll -- even though his potential reelection is almost four years away.

"We have got to keep raising money, and we want to keep our field organization active," said Rob Gray, a top political adviser who heads the campaign office. "We don't want it to rust in the off season."

That's not the only well-oiled political organization Cellucci will have.

In a recent power play, the governor took over the Republican State Committee, installing his own chairman, state Representative Brian Cresta, who will get a $47,500-a-year salary for his effort. He's the first chairman in memory to be paid.

Cellucci has also placed one of his top political operatives, John Brockelman, at GOP headquarters as its $85,000-a-year executive director. Brockelman will be joined by two other aides from the Cellucci campaign. The state committee now firmly in his control, Cellucci hopes to raise $2 million this year for the party, nearly triple its usual off-year budget.

With that kind of war chest, the state committee could become a formidable asset for Republican electioneering efforts.

That's where Bush, the man the would-be kingmaker hopes to make king, comes in. Bush, son of the former president, sits at the nexus where Cellucci's personal history, moderate politics, and possible future hopes intersect.

In 1979, Cellucci was one of a small group of Massachusetts Republican operatives who signed on with a presidential long shot named George Herbert Walker Bush. When Bush came to Massachusetts to campaign in those early days, Cellucci, a back-bench legislator from Hudson, picked him up at the airport and drove him around the state.

Bush didn't win in 1980, but he battled Ronald Reagan long and hard for the Republican nomination -- and his effort gave Cellucci a drink of the heady elixir of national politics. The 1980 campaign forged a small band of brothers who cherished their ties to the Bush family, wearing lapel pins of his World War II bomber, filling their office with his photos, and rallying like Massachusetts minutemen for their friend.

There was Andy Card, a former legislator from Holbrook who eventually became Bush's deputy White House chief of staff, then Secretary of Transportation; Ron Kaufman, Card's brother-in-law, who served as Bush's White House political director; and Andy Natsios, a former Holliston representative, who will soon take over as Cellucci's administration and finance secretary. Natsios headed international relief for Bush.

Cellucci, Kaufman, and company came together again for Bush in 1988, waging a guerrilla campaign for him in his fall race against then Governor Michael S. Dukakis. Cellucci served as Massachusetts chairman for Bush that year, and New England chairman four years later, when Bush ran unsuccessfully for re-election. While Card, Kaufman, and Natsios went to Washington, Cellucci stayed home to run for lieutenant governor. But the Bush tie stayed strong.

"Guys like Paul Cellucci, Ron Kaufman, and Andy Card have been very lucky in life, and one of the great parts in our life has been our relationship with the Bush family," said Kaufman. "If George W. was the least popular guy running for president, we would still support him because of our relationship. The fact that he is the best qualified makes it easiest."

But the benefits would flow both ways. If Cellucci's machine could, as one adviser puts it, "make Massachusetts a Bush beachhead" for the New England states' Yankee Primary, having Bush atop the 2000 ticket could create the sort of close, exciting race needed to maximize Republican votes here. In 1996, Republican nominee Bob Dole essentially wrote off the state, and down-ticket GOP candidates suffered.

"He will definitely wage a real campaign here with Paul in the governor's office," said Ray Howell, a close Cellucci adviser. "It will serve to get people energized, even in Democratic Massachusetts."

Such a campaign would aid Cellucci's efforts to rebuild the state GOP, which counts no members in the state's congressional delegation and whose numbers have shrunk to near-irrelevance in the Legislature.

And if Bush should win? Well, there's a long history of Massachusetts Republicans, from Christian Herter to John Volpe to Elliot Richardson to Andy Card -- and almost to Bill Weld -- getting Cabinet posts from friendly presidents.

A move to a Bush administration would be a double-cushion shot for Cellucci and the GOP, catapulting him to national prominence, even as it allowed him to pass governorship to Jane Swift, his number two.

It was just such a handoff by Weld in 1997 that made Cellucci the incumbent in 1998, giving him a decided advantage in the governor's race and helping the Republican Party keep the state's top job.

All that, of course, is a long way off. As one Cellucci adviser puts it, "Reelection is what's on his radar screen right now. But who knows?"

Who indeed? Which is why the louder Cellucci talks up Bush, the more people figure the angles.