he executive director of the Massachusetts GOP was vacationing in Jamaica while Republican Jack E. Robinson III officially announced he would run against Edward M. Kennedy for US Senate.
His absence, observers said, was symbolic. So was the location of the announcement.
Robinson, who has come under fire for personal issues ranging from a weapon found in his car during a drunken-driving stop to accusations that he forced himself on women, made his candidacy speech in the same room where two other high-level GOP candidates tried to explain away bizarre accusations in the 1980s that ultimately cost them their races.
And just hours after the Ivy League-educated businessman officially declared his willingness to spend as much as $1 million of his own funds to try to unseat Kennedy - their last ''viable'' candidate after Plymouth District Attorney Michael Sullivan quit last week, raising only $60,000 - Governor Paul Cellucci called Robinson's bid a ''kamikaze mission.''
Such is the state of the GOP in Massachusetts.
Although Republicans have held the governship since 1990, the party is struggling in virtually every other way, losing legislative seats, having the establishment candidate George W. Bush defeated soundly by insurgent John McCain in the presidential primary, and now, perhaps, losing its credibility over another tainted candidate.
''This is not where we wanted to be,'' Cellucci conceded before boarding a plane to China yesterday afternoon. ''But people aren't lining up to run against Senator Kennedy. Right now, I don't have a candidate I can support.''
Jean Inman, a former state GOP chairwoman, was more blunt, declaring that the party was being ''held together by fragile threads.''
Brian Cresta, the current chairman, said there were no members of the state GOP at Robinson's news conference and executive director John Brockelman was in Jamaica.
Rather than throw their resources at Robinson - who matter-of-factly said yesterday, in reference to allegations that he forced himself on women, that he is ''not a groper'' - the state GOP said it is focusing on other things, like winning community offices.
''We need to build that farm team before we're talking about 10 good credible seats for Congress, and that's where the vast majority of our efforts have been this year, starting at the level of town moderators and school committee members,'' Cresta said. ''That's where the vast majority of legislators come from. That's where Paul Cellucci came from.''
Cellucci was a Hudson selectman in the 1970s before joining the Legislature.
The last thing Republicans wanted at this point, Cresta said, was Robinson's public relations nightmare. Although party officials say they asked Robinson about his past, he was apparently not entirely forthcoming. GOP aides were increasingly frustrated when the news media reported the details of some of the issues.
Robinson was seemingly unfazed by his party backing away from him, saying he will fight to build the campaign on his own, without the help of Cresta, Brockelman, or Cellucci.
Robinson also issued an 11-page memorandum that attempts to explain the two motor vehicle incidents, three failed bar exams; charges of copyright infringement when he allegedly used another author's text for a book on Pan American Airlines that he wrote but was never able to publish; a stock-buying flap when Eastern Airlines, his former employer, was going bankrupt; a restraining order he says was based on false claims by an angry former girlfriend; and two business-related lawsuits.
Robinson is not the only Republican candidate who has faced criticism of his or her past in the second-floor press room at the Omni Parker House in downtown Boston.
In 1982, John Lakian, a wealthy GOP businessman who had won his party's convention endorsement, was derailed when the Globe reported that he had falsified parts of his resume, including indicating that he graduated from Harvard and received a battlefield promotion. He denounced the charges and filed suit.
Then, in 1986, Royall Switzler, a state representative from Wellesley, announced in the same room that he had not been a member of the Green Berets, as previously claimed.
