A cup of joe with a guy named Steve (Pagliuca, that is) - Unca Teddy's Massachusetts Senate seat

Jack Spillane column: A cup of joe with a guy named Steve (Pagliuca, that is)
By Jack Spillane
November 08, 2009 12:00 AM

I'm talking about Steve Pagliuca, the venture capitalist and Celtics co-owner who's running for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.

In the wake of my initial column about Pagliuca, I had the opportunity to sit down with him for a short interview this week. He had toured a New Bedford scallop company — which must have been in between his cutting TV ads. (I don't need to tell you, of course, that the ads have been getting more and more effective.)

It was the second trip to the city for Pagliuca, and he's mostly just hung out at local businesses both times.

The first visit was at Konarka, the photovoltaic film processor just starting out at the New Bedford Business Park; the second at Fleet Fisheries and Ocean's Alive scallops.

None of the local politicians are endorsing Pagliuca, and they didn't accompany him on his rounds. He's not really one of them.

"Pags" is definitely not the favorite in this race; he's not the guy connected to the party activists who normally dominate party primaries. Pagliuca, however, very definitely is a guy who doesn't need anybody else's money to run because he has $400 million of his own. And maybe that's not a bad thing.

So I'm standing before a crumb-ridden table at the Dunkin' Donuts on Melville Boulevard and watching Pags clean it up before we sit down. No handler is cleaning it, no advance man, and not me. Just Steve Pagliuca. And without affectation.

Pags is not glad-handing the few customers at Dunk's, and he is not dressed in a $1,000 suit with a professionally pressed shirt. He's casual in a leather bomber jacket and seems as affable and humble as an easygoing neighbor.

Still, I'm sitting there trying to figure out whether he's a Mitt Romney or a Ross Perot type.

You know, the kind of fabulously rich guy who decides they need to be president or a U.S. senator because there's nothing else left for them to do.

But Pagliuca, a reputed $400 million man, isn't seeming to fit the stereotype much.

"I've always wanted to make a difference," he says. "I got heavily involved in the community with the MSPCC (Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) the last 10 years, and the Boston Celtics for the last seven years."

Like a lot of folks, I'm more familiar with the prevention society for animals, and I'm wondering what that says about the state of the world.

Even so, I have to say I'm hard pressed to think of a charity whose work I'd consider more noble. I look up the MSPCC Web site and read a bit.

"Parenting can be a difficult job but effective parenting can be taught," it says. "Our programs work."

After 28 years as a journalist I've become more than a little cynical about most social programs, their boilerplate slogans, their big staffs, their ineffective activities.

But I'm thinking about the folks here who were struggling with high unemployment long before the current recession, and am skeptical of what a venture capitalist could ever do to help.

Like any other pol these days, he talks about the "North Carolina Research Triangle" solution. Use university research to create manufacturing jobs in biotech, environmental technology to create new manufacturing opportunities.

The research/business connection is everybody's formula lately. And while Tom Davis up at the New Bedford Business Park has built up some growing high-tech shops, it doesn't seem enough for a city of 100,000.

But Pagliuca talks about blue-collar cities like New Bedford being the places where high-tech manufacturing could most affordably flourish. And he insists that venture capital and private equity ventures — money seeking to compound money through investment — can create lots of jobs.

"To me it's incontrovertible that investment in people, investment in business, creates jobs, they don't destroy jobs," he says.

He's also dismissing the argument that his firm, Bain Capital, eliminated as many jobs as it created. He cites a World Economic Forum study that concluded that 651,000 of Massachusetts' 3.1 million jobs have resulted from venture capital.

"We can create economic zones and use of the buildings down here, and you have people that can do that," he says.

Well, everyone from the last three mayors to the last five governors have made that proposal. And job growth in the city is still slow.

Still, I'm thinking that a guy who really understands money would be better off solving these intractable problems than someone who is relying on somebody else's expertise.

We move on to the Wall Street crash and subsequent bailouts, and Pagliuca suddenly asks, "Who do you think the largest venture capitalist in the world is?"

But Wall Street is continuing with high-stakes gambles not backed up with enough capital, Pagliuca says.

"That's why I need to go to Washington because I understand how to get our money back, and understand the trade-offs involved."

Pagliuca seems to realize he's not going to dispel the cynicism of this gumshoe. But he lets fly one final chaser as we wrap up the interview.

He talks about turning around the Celtics and his campaign moving from last place to second (to Attorney General Martha Coakley).

Pagliuca is laughing almost to himself, but also seems to be gently laughing at the guy asking the questions.

And I'm thinking that I can't easily remember another politician in my three decades as a reporter who did a better of job of dispelling cynicism in as focused and convincing a way.

Brown makes his case for the U.S. Senate
By Brittany Abery and Justin Meisinger, Correspondents
Wed Nov 04, 2009, 12:07 PM EST

Sherborn - Scott Brown knows he faces an uphill battle as a Republican seeking to fill Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat.

Until last week, when Jack E. Robinson filed nomination papers, Brown was the only member of the GOP seeking the seat, which is also the goal of four Democrats.

Although the seat has been in Democratic hands since the 1950s, and more than a decade has passed since Massachusetts voters sent a Republican to Congress, Brown, one of just five Republicans in the state Senate, said there is no inevitability to a Democrat victory.

“This isn’t a Democratic seat; it’s a seat of the people of Massachusetts,” said Brown, 50, whose victory in a 2004 special election to fill a state Senate seat vacated by a Democrat was one of the last Republican legislative victories.

Brown has easily held the seat since, winning by a 59-41 percent margin in 2008 that gathered more votes in his district than Barack Obama. Brown attributes his strength as a candidate to his bipartisanship.

“I would not have been overwhelmingly re-elected if I didn’t know how to work across party lines,” said Brown, a Wrentham resident whose district includes Sherborn. “If the Democrats have a good idea, I’d be happy to vote with them.”

Massachusetts has three times as many registered Democrats as Republicans, but more than half the state remains independent or unenrolled. Brown believes there are many who don’t feel represented by the 12 Massachusetts Democratic congressmen in Washington.

Republican strategist Charley Manning agreed. “All four of the Democratic candidates are running far-left campaigns,” he said. Manning worked on Mitt Romney’s Senate campaign against Kennedy in 1994. “I know what a good campaigner Scott is — he’s a good guy and holds a good, moderate position for voters.”

State Rep. Elizabeth Poirier, R-North Attleborough, said Brown will represent people who aren’t being heard.

“Frankly, we need balance,” said Poirier. “Scott will provide the other point of view.”

She said voters should be confident in Brown’s ability to represent them in Washington. “We’ve worked together, we’ve campaigned together,” said Poirier. “He’s very diligent and compassionate.”

A fiscal conservative who has never voted for a tax increase, Brown said he’s running, in part, to offer an alternative to the spending policies of Washington.

“I’m for free enterprise, low taxes and less government involvement,” he said. “Government has a place — it absolutely has a place, but we need to know when to get out of the way.”

He’s particularly worried about the government’s role in the growing national deficit.

“I have some very great concerns about how our children, and at this point our grandchildren, will pay this back,” he said.

Brown has two daughters with his wife of 23 years, WCVB-TV reporter Gail Huff. Arianna attends Syracuse University; Ayla is a basketball standout at Boston College. In 2006, Ayla made it to the top 16 on “American Idol.”

Her fame led to a moment of controversy for Brown in 2007 when he was invited to speak at King Phillip Regional High School in Wrentham. Brown opened his speech by reading Facebook comments, obscenities and all, directed at his stance against gay marriage. He also named King Phillip students who had directed similar comments to his daughter, Ayla.

He has since told reporters that he does not regret sticking up for his family, and points out that he does support civil unions for same-sex couples.

Brown grew up in Massachusetts, a graduate of Wakefield High School, Tufts University and Boston College Law School. While in law school, Brown posed for a centerfold in Cosmopolitan as the winner of the magazine’s “America’s Sexiest Man” competition. He put the $1,000 toward his law school tuition.

The magazine joked this September about Brown’s appearance in the June 1982 issue, suggesting a range of new campaign slogans for the candidate, asking “Who needs Joe Plumber when you can have Scott six-pack?”

In 1982 Brown told the magazine he was “a bit of a patriot,” a fitting description for someone who went on to spend 30 years as a member of the Massachusetts National Guard where he is now a lieutenant colonel in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. He said his service gives him experience his competitors lack.

“I have a good feel for what role we have in the world,” said Brown. “I take that seriously.”

Brown’s military experience has informed his stance on the wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said he appreciates President Obama’s thoughtfulness about American involvement in both countries. “I know the president thinks long and hard before sending our men and women into harm’s way,” said Brown.

But Brown believes, when it comes to strategy, generals, not politicians, are best equipped to make those decisions. “If they say we need to adjust, adapt or add more troops, we should do that,” Brown said.

In between his responsibilities to his family, his constituents and his country, Brown still manages to find time for a more personal pursuit. He is a keen triathlete, competing in races across the country.

“I don’t sleep a lot,” he laughed.

Brown will get even less sleep over the next few months as he campaigns and raises funds, but he promises constituents it won’t interfere with his state Senate duties. “I haven’t missed a vote yet since I started running, and I don’t plan to,” said Brown. “I have an obligation.”

http://www.wickedlocal.com/dover/news/x880804615/Brown-makes-his-case-for-the-U-S-Senate

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