A Swift Choice?
Conservatives should not write-off Massachusetts.

obert Reich, an elfin college professor, European-style social democrat, and former Clinton Cabinet member, threw his hat into the race for Massachusetts governor last week. Although he entered the race late and has raised little money, he has a good shot at the Democratic nod.

While Reich accepts many of the Left's silly nostrums, he's a difficult man to hate. He avoided involvement in the Clinton scandals, and wrote an honest, funny memoir about his time in the Washington snake pit (1997's Locked in the Cabinet). And though he's partial to union-inspired schemes to set up an enormous welfare state, his core intellectual belief that a skilled workforce does more for a nation's economic health than sheer corporate might makes a lot of sense. In short, he looks better than the motley collection of (five) career pols and party hacks vying for the Democrats' blessing. There's even a recent precedent for a high-profile candidate without elective experience getting Massachusetts's Democratic nomination: Boston University President John Silber lost a nail-biting governor's race to Republican William Weld in 1990.

While Reich seems a pleasant enough person, Jane Swift, Massachusetts's Republican acting governor, seems like a good target for conservatives seeking to purge leftist influences from the Republican party: She supports legal abortion, made some ethical gaffes soon after taking office as lieutenant governor, and has just asked an openly gay man to share the Republican ticket.

With a left-wing Democratic frontrunner who is hard to hate and a Republican officeholder who fails nearly every right-wing litmus test, it would be easy for conservatives to write-off Massachusetts. Weld, after all, ended his career in a political steel-cage match against Jesse Helms after President Clinton tapped the Massachusetts governor to become ambassador to Mexico.

Swift, however, has compiled an impressive record in Boston's Beacon Hill statehouse. As an unusually active lieutenant governor, she spearheaded efforts on taxes, crime, and education. Her positions are roughly the same as Rudy Giuliani's except that, whereas he never seriously cut taxes and actually proved himself a profligate spender during the late 1990s boom, she's helped to cut taxes and keep spending relatively under control.

The ongoing income-tax rollback, massive reductions in crime, and education reforms give Swift a significant record of accomplishment. Since the Republican party took the state house, Massachusetts has reduced crime more than any other state east of the Mississippi. Two Massachusetts police departments — Boston and Lowell — present textbook cases of effective, community-oriented public-safety reform, and dozens of small suburban agencies there provide effective services. While Swift has plenty of friends in police departments, she's made enemies in the teachers unions through policies that test students and that hold teachers accountable.

Swift's flaws aren't serious. The Big Dig, an ambitious project to unsnarl freeway traffic in central Boston, has seen every kind of corruption and cost overrun. But Swift herself hasn't been involved. Her anointed running mate, Patrick Guerriero (who still faces an opponent for the nomination), shares Swift's moderate Republican views. As a former mayor and state legislator, he played a major role in wrestling control of the Republican party apparatus out of the hands of big-spending Republicans. And as Swift's deputy chief of staff, he has repeatedly spoken out for the interests of local governments and helped beat back a proposal that would have let the state micromanage local parks.

In any case, even he is far preferable to Robert Reich. The former secretary of labor would return the state to the bad old days when Michael Dukakis and a coterie of Democratic leftists attempted to build Socialism in One State. (The ice-cream-factory owner appointed by Dukakis to head the state's garbage dumps was so given to talk on worker revolution that even sympathetic administration insiders christened his domain the Department of Socialism and Hazardous Waste Management.) Reich did nothing to reassure voters when he refused to answer a question about being too liberal. Teddy Kennedy, indeed, might find himself a bit to the right of his state's governor were Reich to win in November. Jane Swift, on the other hand, may not pass every conservative litmus test — but, in a liberal state, she's a good choice.