or the first time since joining the Senate in 1962, US Senator Edward M. Kennedy appears to be heading into a reelection campaign without major party opposition.
Jack E. Robinson, the renegade Republican who pledged to take on Kennedy, appears to have fallen short of the required 10,000 certified signatures to qualify for the GOP primary ballot, state election records showed yesterday.
At the 5 p.m. filing deadline, Robinson had 5,122 voter signatures that had been certified by city and town clerks. He would need a huge surge of newly certified signatures to make the ballot, and state election officials doubt he can do it.
''It is very questionable that he will be on the ballot,'' said Secretary of State William F. Galvin, whose office monitors the certification process.
Robinson's hopes lie in a last-minute blitz by his campaign workers to deliver signatures to city halls and town clerks for certification.
Robinson, who lost the support of the Republican Party and Governor Paul Cellucci after embarrassing revelations about his personal life surfaced in March, has called a press conference for 10 a.m. today.
He could not be reached for comment and the phone at his campaign headquarters was not answered yesterday.
If Robinson fails to make the ballot, it will be the first time since 1916, when senators were first directly elected by voters, that the Republicans will not field a candidate for a US Senate seat in Massachusetts.
Signatures for candidates to gain ballot access are first submitted to city and town clerks, then certified as valid by local officials, and forwarded to Galvin's office.
Yesterday, state Democratic Party officials said staff members had surveyed over 200 town and city clerks - including all the major cities but Lynn - and found Robinson had 4,161 raw signatures still awaiting certification.
Robinson has claimed that 80 percent of the signatures that his workers gather are valid and certified. But election experts say that is an extremely high rate for most signature-gathering drives. Usually the rate is about 50 percent.
Galvin said the state will know in the next few days whether Robinson has failed.
Meanwhile, Libertarian candidate Carla Howell had collected 8,840 signatures, and state officials predict she will qualify for the ballot. Howell, a 44-year-old management consultant from Wayland, has said she will raise $500,000 to take on Kennedy.
