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Minus GOP support, Robinson starts Senate bid
Defiant and determined, Robinson said the public would make its own assessment of him, based on issues, not his personal life or alleged sexual misbehavior.
''I am not a womanizer. I am not a groper,'' Robinson said.
Later, Cellucci announced the Massachusetts Republican Party would withdraw its support for Robinson, saying the challenger to US Senator Edward M. Kennedy did not adequately explain past
accusations of sexual misconduct against him.
''I think the sheer volume of the allegations and the disturbing nature of those allegations makes it pretty impossible to get this campaign off the ground,'' Cellucci said, as he called on Robinson to ''reassess'' his candidacy.
A former girlfriend took out a restraining order against Robinson in 1998, alleging that he forced her to have sex with him. Another woman accused him of unwanted sexual advances during a blind date four years ago.
''I have zero tolerance for dating violence, domestic violence,'' said Cellucci, who only last week had embraced Robinson's candidacy. ''He refused to answer those questions. I will not be supporting him.''
Saying now that an effort to unseat Kennedy is a ''kamikaze mission,'' Cellucci said the Republicans would not back a candidate against the Democrat for the first time in the senator's 38 years in office. He said it was too late to find a serious challenger.
Robinson refused to budge from the race, saying he will continue his campaign without the support of the governor or the party.
''If we have to run outside the party apparatus, so be it,'' said Robinson, a 39-year-old Jamaica Plain native who now lives in Connecticut. ''I wasn't relying on the governor anyway.''
Robinson's unusual solo campaign launch made for a chaotic day in the state's political world. By day's end, Robinson accused Cellucci of ''double-crossing'' him.
In an interview with New England Cable News Network, an increasingly angry Robinson also alluded to rumors that Cellucci gambles on horce races. ''I didn't have any gambling problems, but that didn't stop the governor from waging his campaign,'' he said.
Cellucci has said in the past that although he has enjoyed going to the racetrack a few times a year, he has never been a serious gambler.
At his news conference, where no Republican elected official or party leader appeared, Robinson released what he called ''The Robinson Report,'' an 11-page document describing a series of potentially embarrassing issues in his personal life.
The report included three failed attempts to pass the bar exam, a drunken driving and dangerous weapon charge for which he was never convicted, and a court finding that he had violated an author's copyright while attempting to publish a history of Pan American Airlines.
Regarding the court case, Robinson said, he had ''no other source by which to retell the early history of Pan Am other than using the wording and statements found in the earlier book.'' Asked by a reporter at the news conference if he had plagiarized the work, Robinson said perhaps he went ''overboard.''
Among the most serious of the incidents is the restraining order obtained by a Mansfield woman in 1998 who said in a sworn statement that Robinson had forced her to have sex with him. Robinson refused to directly address the accusation during the news conference yesterday, but in the report, he said the woman harassed him because he attempted to break off their relationship.
The two signed an agreement not to contact each other and she dropped the complaint a month after she filed it. Wendy Murphy, the woman's attorney, said this week that the former girlfriend stands by her original accusation.
Robinson has pledged to spend up to $1 million on his campaign and said he is not deterred by the public airing of incidents in his personal life, which have surfaced during the past week.
Robinson, who says he is a fiscal conservative who is moderate on social issues and favors abortion rights, tried to portray himself as a candidate with a reform agenda, saying Kennedy's approach to policy issues such as health care, education, and taxes is mired in the 20th century and has not worked.
Robinson backed away from hints Monday that he would raise issues about Kennedy's character, including the 1969 accident at Chappaquiddick in which a woman died in a car driven by the senator. Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and received a suspended two-month sentence.
While Robinson repeated he had information from ''the highest authorities'' that people close to Kennedy were responsible for leaking damaging information about him, he said he would not raise the character issue in the campaign. Kennedy aides have denied leaking information.
Robinson said he accepts that he must face scrutiny and, for nearly an hour, he answered questions ranging from the sexual misconduct accusations to challenges to his claim that he has enough assets to pour $1 million into his own campaign.
In the Robinson Report, he provided his side of a case in which a federal court - in a 1995 suit he said he brought - concluded he had violated copyright laws when he used large sections of another author's book in his own manuscript about the rise and fall of Pan Am. Robinson's book was never published.
The report also outlined his perspective on his arrest in 1985 on drunken driving charges by Boston police that were dropped when he passed a breath analysis test. At the time, he also was charged with possession of a dangerous weapon when police found a martial arts weapon called a Shuriken star in his pocket.
The weapons charge was continued without a finding for a year. Robinson said in the report he did not know how the weapon had gotten into his jacket and suggested its owner had placed there when he was in a restaurant.
At the news conference yesterday, Robinson would not talk about the allegation of a second woman, who said in an interview with the Globe on Monday that he made unwanted sexual advances toward her. He also did not address the matter in his report.
The full text of The Robinson Report is available on Boston.com, keyword: Robinson.
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eleasing an extraordinary history addressing personal problems from alleged sexual misconduct to possible plagiarism, Republican Jack E. Robinson III launched his campaign for US Senate yesterday, refusing to heed calls from Governor Paul Cellucci to abandon the bid.