Democrat Chris Gabrieli puzzles governor’s campaign

Howard Manly

By all accounts, democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Gabrieli is a numbers man, and as such, he likes to pose a question of logic involving the old television game show “Let’s Make a Deal.”

On a typical segment, host Monte Hall would ask a contestant to choose between three doors. Once a door was chosen — say door number one -— Hall would then show one of the booby prizes behind, say door number two. At this point, the contestant could either stay with door number one or switch to door number three.

The question, Gabrieli asks, is whether the contestant has a better shot by staying with door number one or switching.

Most would guess that they had a fifty-fifty shot and would stay with door number one. But Gabrieli, the numbers man, whose brother is a mathematics professor at MIT, says that switching to number three is the right answer because the contestant now has a roughly 66 percent shot with door number three but only a 33 percent shot with door number one.

The “Let’s make a Deal” analogy is appropriate for this gubernatorial race and Gabrieli, who barely made the cut off during the Democratic State Convention, is banking that his numbers are right.

At last count, Gabrieli, a wealthy venture capitalist, has spent about $7.3 million to win the corner office — and has said he is willing to spend as much as $15.36 million before the election is over in November. But Gabrieli is still behind door No. 3, largely because of his failure to win either of the two elected offices he has sought: the lieutenant governor’s office in 2002 and a U.S. Representative seat in 1998.

Behind door No. 1 is former White House civil rights attorney and corporate executive Deval Patrick. While he easily won the Democratic State Convention back in June, he has seen his lead in the polls rise and then diminish as the campaign has worn on.

Behind Door No. 2, of course, is state Attorney General Thomas Reilly. He has made one bad political decision after another, starting with his decision to select State Rep. Marie St. Fleur as his running mate instead of Gabrieli. More recent, Reilly has been dogged by unseemly revelations of his campaign’s connection with attempts to blame Patrick for all of Coca-Cola’s union troubles.

Whether Gabrieli’s decision to run for governor was based on sour grapes remains unclear. What is clear is that Reilly’s St. Fleur decision quickly detonated in an explosion of unpaid taxes, student loans and late mortgage payments.

Armed with money and a credible record of community activism, Gabrieli is smart, likeable and has become the X-factor in this campaign. He is, as he likes to say, “about results.”

But some pundits insist that Gabrieli’s campaign is no more than another wealthy guy trying to buy his way into office. That theme was picked up recently by Patrick who reportedly told the Springfield Republican, “People don’t want candidates who buy the race. It’s tacky.”

That might be true, but during a wide-ranging interview with the Banner, Gabrieli said that his money rarely comes up when he is talking with people across the state.

“It’s more of an issue with the media,” Gabrieli told the Banner. “I never get asked about it. I don’t think the voters care.”

What Gabrieli does hear on the campaign trail is a real sense of frustration over the high cost of housing, the high cost of college education and the very real fear that more Massachusetts residents, particularly the young and educated, are moving elsewhere. More troublesome, Gabrieli explained, is the very real sense that people living outside of Boston are disconnected from the state capital.

To their credit, all of the Democratic candidates are focusing on what they describe as the failure of Republican leadership to create jobs, stem the exodus of residents from the state and bridge the social gaps.

But unlike the other candidates, Gabrieli is quick to point out, “I have actually done something about it.”

Gabrieli has two answers for just about every problem nagging the state — education and economic development.

Take the latter, for instance. When asked about his plans for revitalizing inner cities, Gabrieli told the Banner that he worked with state Treasurer Timothy Cahill and a team of investment experts from McKinsey & Co. to invest a portion of the state’s $32 billion Pension Reserve Investment Trust in development projects in depressed areas across the state.

Gabrieli said he was successful in getting the state pension funds to invest about $100 million locally. He then learned about the lack of minorities involved in the investment of public funds.

Gabrieli said that he was surprised to learn that the Canyon-Johnson Urban Fund, led by former NBA great Magic Johnson, was unable to receive a fair share of business opportunities.

“Given their successful track record, I found it hard to believe that they couldn’t get more work,” Gabrieli said. “The investment world is just like everything else. People tend to hire people who they feel comfortable with. But what does ‘comfortable’ mean?”

It remains to be seen how Gabrieli would redefine the “comfortable” if he were elected governor. But in the meantime, he is hell-bent on expanding what he called his double-bottom-line strategy of not only making money on state investments but also doing good for communities along the way.

“One of the problems with the investment world, especially when it comes to inner cities,” Gabrieli told the Banner, “is that they remain very skeptical that they can make money or do any good.”

Gabrieli said he wants to change all that. Part of that means training small business owners to go the next level with the help of state investors who provide not only money but also knowledge.

“Those small business owners — and I’m talking about the business that has between five and 20 employees, earns about a half-million dollars a year in revenue and the owner has to do almost everything — has three main problems; a lack of capital, a lack of skills and a lack of a network,” Gabrieli said.

And that leads to Gabrieli’s strongest suit. “Education is the key to economic opportunity,” Gabrieli repeated, citing his own experience as a child of Italian and Hungarian parents, attending Harvard University and transforming his father’s fledgling medical software company into a huge business success.

As founder of Massachusetts 2020, a nonprofit educational organization, Gabrieli led the charge to increase the number of hours that students spend in school. In this particular case, his efforts led to results.

The state legislature recently approved $6.5 million in the FY2007 state budget for the Expanded Learning Time Initiative, enabling 10 schools in five different districts to keep their doors open to provide additional study time for students and professional development time for teachers.

That is probably a good thing, and at least the program is in place whether Gabrieli wins the election or not. But as it is now, with Patrick still holding a lead only three weeks before the Democratic primary, Gabrieli must separate himself from all the other wealthy guys that came before him and emphasize his ability to be both rich and a liberal Democrat.

That is not an easy thing to do, but then again, neither is asking voters to switch from Door No. 1 to Door No. 3, regardless of the odds.