POLITICAL CIRCUIT / BRIAN C. MOONEY

Bradley building a team in Mass.

By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff, May 12, 1999

For Bay State Democrats, Bill Bradley's upstart presidential campaign at times must seem like a well-traveled rumor. Well, it finally touched down on Massachusetts soil yesterday at a small, hush-hush organizational meeting in East Boston.

The event was supposed to be top secret, giving it the air of a cabal or underground resistance. Bradley's candidacy, after all, is something of an insurgency, especially in Massachusetts, a presumed stronghold of Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic front-runner in 2000.

Bradley slipped into Boston early, met for an hour in a small conference room at the Harborside Hyatt Hotel with an eclectic band of two-dozen activists, then headed north for three days of campaigning in New Hampshire, the first primary state. It was Bradley's first organizational meeting in the Bay State, and he'll return Thursday to meet with Boston-area fund-raisers.

"It was a good beginning," said Bradley, a former three-term senator from New Jersey, as he emerged from the meeting hosted by James M. Shannon, a former attorney general and congressman, and consultant-spinmeister Michael Goldman.

Bradley cannot match Gore's political firepower on the ground here. The Veep is on a first-name basis with a horde of elected officials, fund-raisers, and activists. He's schmoozed and stroked them during six-plus years in office and many visits to the area. Bradley's presence, meanwhile, has been nil. He started with nothing, not a stick of political infrastructure.

"It's not going to be like anything you've ever seen," Bradley said of his local effort. "It will be 'You fight your war, and I'll fight mine,' " he said of the Gore matchup.

It's quite evident, even from the skeletal Massachusetts organization now emerging, that Bradley will be competitive here. That's significant because Massachusetts is not only an early primary state but also a staging area for New Hampshire.

Moreover, yesterday's session can't hurt Bradley's slim prospects in Saturday's presidential straw poll at the state party's convention in Springfield. The state party is ignoring appeals by the national party and both camps to forgo the vote.

In a head-to-head race, Bradley basically gets everyone who's not already hanging out the windows of Gore's well-stuffed front-runner bus. But the lacquer of Gore inevitability, which discouraged Senator John F. Kerry and others from running, is wearing thin. He's still the guy to beat but no longer a sure thing. His stumbling and a backlash against President Clinton will cause many Democrats to take a second look.

For some Bay State backers, the Bradley campaign offers presidential action and the thrills of challenging a sitting vice president. Others admire Bradley's cerebral approach to issues or his emphasis on improving race relations.

"I never saw a windmill I didn't like," quipped Michael Harrington as he left the meeting with Bradley. Harrington once represented the North Shore as a maverick reformer in Congress, serving with Gore.

So did Shannon, who described Bradley as "a big thinker, looking at the big picture."

"There's never been a candidate for president in recent history who had as good a chance of winning with as little institutional support," said Shannon.

Gore has most of the varsity squad, but Bradley is assembling the best of the rest. It's an intriguing lot. Goldman, then working for Scott Harshbarger, helped engineer Shannon's ouster as AG in 1990. Ditto Donald Davenport, Harshbarger's longtime chief political aide, who met with Bradley yesterday.

Also present were former legislator Marjorie Clapprood, state Senator Michael Morrissey of Quincy, state Representatives Paul Demakisof Boston and Charles Murphy of Burlington, activist Susan Shaer of Arlington, Democratic national committeewoman Virginia Allen of Hull, Salem Mayor Stanley Usovicz, and Norfolk District Attorney William Keating. On board but absent were Senator Robert Creedon of Brockton, Berkshire County Sheriff Carmen Massimiano, Waltham Mayor William Stanley, and Taunton pol-turned-lobbyist Ted Aleixo.

On the fund-raising side, Bradley is assembling a team that includes Thaleia Schlesinger, twin sister of the late senator Paul Tsongas, advertising honcho Jack Connors, attorney Jimmy Segel, and real estate executive Kevin Phelan.

For a candidate who had nothing a few months ago, that's not too shabby. Who knows? Maybe now they can stop meeting secretly.