The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 17

The Boston Globe City Region B3 11 1 11111 o111111 iiiiiiiiiiiiiitin i i i i i 1 1 1 it 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i iimiiiiiiiiimiiiini! iiiiiiii i iiiiiiii mini inn urn i i iimmmiii 0 1 iiovation NTR0VVEST LORRiDOh 'Tl TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2006 -AO' "a a Li fit -a fe- t8 --X 1 33 6, minim I taJ i tj BILL GREENEGLOBE STAFF JANET KNOTTGLOBE STAFF BUSINESS FORUM Deval Patrick spoke at a PatrickMurray Business Cabinet ECONOMY OF TRAIL Lieutenant Governor and gubernatorial candidate Kerry meeting on women's issues yesterday in Watertown. Earlier, several Republicans to boost the state's economy endorsed Patrick, including former senator William Saltonstall, former US Healey outlined her plans breakfast address to the Healey tied the area well Arc of Innovation495 Metrowest Corridor Partnership. attorney Wayne Budd, and Gloria Larson, former secretary of economic affairs being to growth and development in the corridor. Union backs ballot initiative to organize home day-care workers tion and Care raised concerns in a recent analysis. If approved, the analysis warned, the initiative could set a precedent by giving small, private businesses the right to collective bargaining with a government agency.

With that power, a union could drive the cost of government subsidies above market rates, a move that could drain state funds and inflate child-care costs across the state, the analysis found. "It's not necessarily for kids," said Ann Reale, the commissioner of Early Education and Care. But a union supporter insisted that the measure is aimed at maintaining high quality day care. "We have no interest in loosening regulations," said Susana Segat, president of SEIU Local 888. "We have kids.

Part of why we are doing this is because we In a survey released Oct. 24 by the Suffolk University Political Research Center, 36 percent of 400 possible voters polled opposed the measure; 34 percent supported it. That was a reversal from in August, when the measure was supported 46 percent to 32 percent. "I would attribute that to voters not understanding" the question, said David Paleologos, the director of the research center. "Historically if voters are confused about the question, their fallback behavior is to protect what currently exists, which is what they know." The union hopes that will change.

This month the SEIU dropped $750,000 into the coffers of the committee supporting the ballot, initiative. The money helped fund the phone call from Kerry, who benefited from more than $3.2 million in mailings, tele i .4 Scrappy gubernatorial candidate Mihos loves a stage want to professionalize the profession." If the initiative passes, a union would need to obtain written authorization from 30 percent of family providers who care for children who are subsidized by the state. If that union then wins a mail ballot, it would become the sole representative to bargain with the state on behalf of all the daycare workers. In the suburbs of Boston, for example, a state voucher will pay roughly $30 a day for the care of a toddler under age 2. The average rate that child-care providers charge parents is $45, according to Early Education and Care.

If the initiative passes, providers could join a union to negotiate those rates on their behalf. But support for the measure has slipped in the polls. ing himself as the only true outsider in the campaign might have worked if Patrick had lost the Democratic primary to Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly. Mihos says he has no regrets.

He has decorated his campaign headquarters, several floors of office space a few steps from the State House, with the trappings of a man who doesn't care about political parties. There are pictures of Ronald Reagan and Robert F. Kennedy; an award Mihos received, during his Turnpike Authority days, from a group of Democratic town committees. And from the street sometimes, there's a clear view of the candidate himself. Mihos's staff says he likes to perch in a chair beside the picture window, where he makes phone calls and waves to people walking by.

He's been known to usher school groups inside for brief lessons in politics. It's all in keeping with his outsider persona, said Bill Hillsman, the Minneapolis political consultant who produced Mihos's eyecatching ads. Hillsman has worked for a string of renegade candidates, from former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura to independent Kinky Friedman, the entertainer running this year for governor of Texas. "A lot of professional politicians have been programmed to death, and they're basically robots at this point," Hillsman said. Still, when Hillsman conceived of the "Heads Up" ad, which featured characters with their heads between their legs, Mihos and his staff balked.

"We looked at it, and we just said, no, we're not doing this," Mihos said. "Then when Milena del Valle died in the Interstate 90 connector tunnel collapse, I went, 'What was I At first, Mihos said, he insisted that the ads air only between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. He changed his vision commercials, and radio ads funded by the SEIU during his 2004 presidential campaign. "I believe in organized labor," Kerry said in a statement.

"I think that if you bring family child-care providers across the state together and give them the opportunity to collectively bargain with the state, it will help improve parents' access to affordable, quality child care." Sue Winn, who has run a day care in her home outside Seattle for 26 years, flew to Massachusetts last week to distribute pamphlets and discuss how 8,000 home child-care workers joined the SEIU in Washington last year. "I think the major issue for providers is to be recognized as a profession, not just glorified baby sitters," said Winn, who takes care of five children in her home. tr li DINA RUDICKGLOBE SI Af week. "If I get the votes of everybody who has a sibling rivalry or some type of family squabble, I win going away." Besides, his wife's side of the family is on board. In Danvers, his entourage consisted of his daughter, his father-in-law, and his brother-in-law, Arthur Argeros, who joined the campaign as treasurer after he was fired from an administrative job at the MBTA.

(Argeros has filed a suit against the agency, contending that his firing was politically motivated. His bosses, at the time, said it was part of a management restructuring.) Mihos's wife, Andrea, who once said she didn't want him to run for office, now happily pitches in. Before he leaves at 6 a.m. for a day of campaigning, she said, she walks with him on the beach outside their Cape Cod home. She fields questions from voters in the grocery store.

When they're alone together, she's the driver. His natural base of voters, Mihos insists, are frustrated working people, which is why he says he doesn't believe the polls. "Do you know anyone that's been polled?" he asked his brother-in-law in Danvers. "Neither do I. The people that are go Rake Wet yesterday during a Without pressure from a union, officials in Massachusetts recently approved an increase that will bump voucher rates up by about $1 a day with more raises expected.

But some say the disparity is still too large. "We need that income to have a safe and healthy environment," said Rosa Jackson, who has watched children in her Dorchester home for 20 years. Jackson, chairwoman of the committee pushing the ballot initiative, said a union would stabilize an industry with high turnover and encourage more people to go into child care. Others aren't so sure. "It's very split in this town," said Dianne Hansen-White, who has run a day care in her Braintree home for 30 years.

"Unions are kind of scary thing for some people." ing to be with me are out working every day. They're not home." There is, his advisers say, a Christy Mihos victory scenario. It could happen, Hillsman says, if Patrick's commanding lead somehow slips. (If the Democrat is felled by an attack ad, Hillsman says, it won't have come from the Mihos camp.) It could happen if Election Day sees an unexpected turnout of grumpy independents. In the meantime, Mihos casts himself as an alternative.

In Danvers, he engaged Steve Lamson, 54, an assistant high school basketball coach, on the high costs of high school sports. Here, Mihos pitched his Proposition One, a bid to devote 40 percent of annual state tax revenues to local aid and slash all sport and activity fees from public schools. Lamson said he was impressed, though "I don't think he's got much of a chance." There were more words of praise from a gray-haired woman who gave him a bear hug, a holistic nutritionist who said she liked his smile, a guy with "Chucky Sr." embroidered on his windbreaker sleeve, who said, "I'm going to push for you, buddy!" At times, though, Mihos appears more novelty candidate than contender. Last week, before an appearance on the NECN show "Wired with Jim Braude," Mihos said he looked forward to sparring with the host: "That's debate prep for me. He just fires these things at you in rapid succession." But for the most part, Braude only wanted to talk about the Big Dig.

Mihos still managed to get in some memorable lines. When Braude asked what it would take to corral the Big Dig, Mihos answered with trademark terseness and a twinkle in his eye: "Courage. Guts. Stones." Joanna Weiss can be reached at weissghbe.com. Leaves!" Ponds Shore mZZS www.

Erkkvm. com I fSSSS Christy Mihos reached out to a supporter before entering the hall for a live televised debate broadcast on CBS4 last week. BALLOT Continued from Page A 1 there is little opposition. The Massachusetts initiative focuses on what the state calls family child-care providers, who run their businesses in private homes and have an average of about six children per location. Unions have already won the right to organize day-care workers in five states, and campaigns are being waged in 18 more.

In Massachusetts, supporters had to collect signatures to force the issue onto the statewide ballot after Governor Mitt Romney vetoed a bill in August that would have given home-based day-care centers the right to unionize. There is no political committee raising money to urge voters to reject the measure, though the state Department of Early Educa Healey woos inose tilling to Patrick By Brian C. Mooney GLOBE STAFF The campaign of Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey began airing a new television spot last night that suggests that casual backers of Democrat Deval L. Patrick should reconsider their support before casting a ballot for governor next week. Neither Healey nor her specific positions on issues are mentioned in the 30-second spot, called "Jogger," which portrays an athletic male musing about Patrick as he takes a morning run on Election Dy.

In a voice-over, the runner states: "A year ago, I'd never heard of Deval Patrick. He seemed different, you know? Worth a look. "But he won't give a straight answer on anything Globe said he didn't pay his own taxes, and now he wants me to pay more Wants all kinds of benefits for illegals, too Terrible on crime. Claimed he prosecuted criminals, then forced to admit he hadn't. It seems he'll rubber-stamp anything the Legislature wants.

It's a shame. He seemed different." The ad contains some distortions. In introducing for the first time in the campaign Patrick's tax delinquency, the spot suggests that the Globe uncovered the 1996 lien, which was actually disclosed by Patrick's campaign and reported by the Globe and other major news media outlets in Boston. At the time Patrick said he missed one or two payments on a plan to repay $8,778 in back taxes from 1993, resulting in the attachment, which was lifted after seven months. Healey campaign manager Tim O'Brien said the ad will run in tandem with one or more positive spots before the election.

Also yesterday, Healey came under fire from some members of the Governor's Commission on Sexual and Domestic Violence, a panel that Healey heads. About 18 members of the commission sent a letter to Healey accusing her of "a fundamental lack of understanding and sensitivity to the needs and vulnerabilities of crime victims" and calling on her to step down from the panel. Healey campaign officials dismissed the letter, saying others on the commission, which has about 300 members and advisers, have supported her. Healey got a boost when she won the endorsement of the Boston Herald in an editorial posted on the paper's jvebsite last night. MIHOS Continued front PageAl his animated ad that imagines politicians and Big Dig engineers deceiving themselves in a manner that is unprintable in a family newspaper.

Yet the attention he's managed to generate, so far, hasn't translated to traction in the polls. Mihos has made himself a local celebrity, but he's sometimes criticized for a lack of big ideas. At forums, when he isn't hurling critical bons mots, he sometimes stands by in awkward silence. When he's the only candidate in the room, though, Mihos has the air of someone living out a fantasy. There's only one thing he doesn't love about running for office, he says: the pressure to wear makeup.

"I won't do it," Mihos said. You're going to get me, warts and all, and pockmarked and busted tooth and glasses. I am me. I mean, I don't want to be anyone else but me." Holly Robichaud, a Republican political consultant, got a sense of that Mihos stubbornness fairly early in his campaign. Impressed by his outspokenness during his years on the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, she signed on in September of last year as a strategist.

Five months later, she quit. "I wanted to work for a serious campaign that really wanted to win," Robichaud said. "And after working with him for a couple of months, it was quite clear that he was not interested in running a real campaign." She said she concluded that he would not do what it would take to win. Among their conflicts, she said, was her insistence that Mihos run as a Republican, and not an independent, in part to add rigor to his campaign. Others say that Mihos's strategy to appeal to unenrolled voters by position -V.

I I mind last month, he said, when an injury to his back and rotator cuff forced him to spend a few days off the campaign trail, watching daytime television at home. "If this is what kids are watching coming home from school," he said he told himself, "put the darn ad up." Now, he makes no apologies and hints at another cache of eyebrow-raising ads in the campaign's final days. "This business is so serious and so overwhelming at times," he said. "Sometimes you've just got to go at it from a less-than-dramatic point of view and get your point across." Mihos has poured some of his own fortune into the race. By mid-October, he had given his campaign a little more than $3 million, according to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance.

He has raised only $355,593 from others. Some of his own relatives have donated to his opponents. Earlier this month, the Boston Herald reported that Mihos's brother, sister, and sister-in-law have contributed to Healey. Months earlier, those same relatives, plus Mihos's mother, gave to Reilly. "It is what it is," Mihos said last "Never Again Will I Wet leaves and clogged gutters are a distant memory for the people who live at linden Ponds.

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