Official Ends Bid to Succeed Dukakis as Edict Backfires : Politics: Lieutenant governor acted to slash spending in governor’s absence. Critics branded it an election stunt.

In the latest installment in a chaotic political saga in Massachusetts, Lt. Gov. Evelyn Murphy said Monday that she was ending her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for governor.

When Gov. Michael S. Dukakis left the state last Friday on a 13-day trade mission to Europe, Murphy seized the moment, as acting governor, to issue an executive order drastically slashing state spending. But the move appeared to backfire, with critics charging that it was a political stunt to improve her chances in the Sept. 18 primary election.

“This is not the time for business as usual,” Murphy said Monday in announcing her decision to withdraw from the race. “It is not the time for politics as usual.”

Tainted in large part by her association with the increasingly unpopular administration of Dukakis, Murphy had been trailing consistently in her race against former Atty. Gen. Frank Bellotti and Boston University President John R. Silber. A newspaper poll released last Thursday showed Murphy with only 15% of the Democratic vote, against 37% for Bellotti and 28% for Silber. Her withdrawal is expected to help Bellotti against the more conservative Silber.

After Dukakis left the state, Murphy announced a plan calling for a 25% reduction in state managerial positions, cuts in state salaries for those earning more than $40,000 and a 10% decrease in the state’s 64,000 employees. She called also for the sale of the Hynes Convention Center, a state-owned facility in Boston that has been a steady money-loser.

Murphy said the moves were necessary to combat the state’s deteriorating fiscal condition. The state’s deficit is so large that Massachusetts’ bond ratings have slipped to the lowest in the nation. In July, after a long struggle with the Legislature, Dukakis signed a $13.4-billion budget that included the largest tax increase in the state’s history. But, in August, tax revenues fell $150 million short of projections.

At a press conference in the Statehouse Monday, Murphy said that she was withdrawing in part because “the political dispute about my decisions is diverting attention away from the very serious problems that made them necessary.”

“This state cannot afford another deficit discovered at the end of another quarter or another year or even at the end of another month,” she said.

Of her decision to issue the executive order, Murphy added: “Now there can be no confusion. It is an honest and necessary act of leadership.”

Mark Longabaugh, Murphy’s campaign manager, said in an interview that Murphy, who holds a doctorate in economics, “knew last week when she signed the executive orders that she was taking a drastic step that would have repercussions on her campaign. She knew it was drastic medicine.

“She knew that her candidacy was a long shot,” he added.

Murphy had been an outspoken advocate of abortion rights and the right to privacy. In a tepid endorsement for the former attorney general, she called Bellotti “the candidate closest to the values that are important to me.” Murphy said she would cast her own vote for Bellotti.

Murphy’s campaign had suffered from a budgetary crisis of its own. Bellotti and Silber, the iconoclastic and unpredictable university president, have blanketed the air waves with radio and television advertisements, compared to only a few such efforts by Murphy.

In the Republican campaign, polls show former U.S. Atty. William Weld has been rising rapidly in his campaign against Steve Pierce, a member of the Legislature.

When asked about Murphy’s decision to bow out of the Democratic race, Dukakis, in Paris, complimented Murphy for running “a strong and progressive” campaign.

And, said the governor: “I know something about disappointment in politics.”