REGIONAL REPORT /NORTHEAST POLITICS : Incumbents in Trouble in New England as Economies Falter : Governors are targets of angry voters. Three Democrats decide not to run, and two GOP officeholders are trailing. Cuomo, Pennsylvania’s Casey seem safe.

As head of the coordinating campaign for the Democratic state ticket, state Rep. Mark Roosevelt of Boston is not the happiest of fellows these days.

“The mood of the electorate is angry,” he said, and that means trouble for the liberal Democratic Establishment. “There’s a vision of a state government that grew fat and lazy--and it’s not totally wrong. People are demanding change.”

What’s true in Massachusetts is true throughout much of the rest of the Northeast. Mounting economic woes, ballooning state budget deficits and rising taxes are translating into widespread voter discontent.

Governors are the most vulnerable incumbents. Three Democratic governors--Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, William A. O’Neill of Connecticut and Madeleine M. Kunin of Vermont--have decided to retire. Two of the three GOP governors in the region are trailing their Democratic rivals. Only in New York and Pennsylvania, where the general economic downturn in the Northeast has yet to hit with full force, are the incumbent governors running comfortably ahead.

“There just isn’t the same degree of voter alienation in those states as in most others,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Millersville University of Pennsylvania.

Here is a rundown on campaigns in the Northeast:

Connecticut

State Republican leaders had looked forward to ending the Democrats’ decades-long hegemony over the governor’s mansion after O’Neill announced that he would not seek a third full term. But their high hopes were lowered when former U.S. Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., a liberal Republican, came out of political retirement to wage an independent gubernatorial campaign.

Weicker, who vigorously attacks both major parties, has led handily in the polls in the three-way race, which pits him against conservative Republican Rep. John G. Rowland and liberal Democratic Rep. Bruce A. Morrison.

“There is nothing wrong with Connecticut that a good kick in the tail of the politicians won’t fix,” Weicker proclaims in a campaign television commercial.

Conservative columnist and publisher William F. Buckley Jr. is spearheading the GOP attack on Weicker, just as he did in 1988, when Weicker was seeking his fourth term in the Senate. Weicker lost that race to former Democratic state Atty. Gen. Joseph I. Lieberman.

The GOP labels Weicker a “man without a plan for Connecticut’s economic future or a party to help him get a plan implemented.”

Rowland’s decision to vacate his congressional seat for the gubernatorial race has produced an intense contest to succeed him between Gary A. Franks, a black real estate investor and three-term Waterbury alderman, and former Democratic Rep. Toby Moffett.

Franks, a staunch conservative, is one of three black Republicans who are running for Congress this year. The others are J. Kenneth Blackwell of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Al Brown of Louisville, Ky. Among them, however, Franks shows the most promise of becoming the first black Republican member of the House since the Reconstruction era.

Rhode Island

With the state’s economy souring and old political scandals likely to return to haunt him if he ran, Gov. Edward DiPrete was advised by many Republicans that it would be suicidal to seek a fourth two-year term.

Pre-primary polls had shown that his approval rating had plummeted to less than 20% and that he would lose in a head-to-head matchup with any of the three likely Democratic gubernatorial contenders.

DiPrete decided to run anyway. He won an easy primary victory but now trails his Democratic opponent in the general election, businessman Bruce G. Sundlun, by 35 percentage points, according to a recent poll.

In another high-profile statewide match, Democratic Sen. Claiborne Pell is battling to retain the seat he has held for nearly three decades. His challenger, perhaps his toughest ever, is GOP Rep. Claudine Schneider.

Pell, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seemed more vulnerable earlier in the campaign than he does now. The Persian Gulf crisis and the easing of tensions in Eastern Europe have given a boost to his campaign appeal to keep an experienced hand in office.

Schneider, who shares many of Pell’s views, is trying to convince voters that it is time for fresh blood. She once said that the 71-year-old Pell was too “out of it” to serve.

Massachusetts

The notion of a voter revolt crystallized here in September, when two outsiders won the gubernatorial nominations.

Boston University President John R. Silber, a neoconservative Democrat, and former U.S. Atty. William F. Weld, a wealthy Yankee Republican, are now locked in a tight race.

The deciding factor in the race may be the candidates’ respective stances toward a highly controversial ballot initiative that would repeal a recent $1.2-billion state income tax hike, roll state fees and charges back to their mid-1988 levels and cut state income tax rates for two years. Silber opposes it as irrational; Weld backs it.

The anti-Establishment rage is also giving Jim Rappaport, a wealthy Concord real estate developer who is making his first quest for public office, a solid chance of defeating freshman Democratic Sen. John Kerry, a rising liberal Democratic star.

A recent poll shows the candidates in a dead heat, and some national Republican leaders view the Massachusetts contest as the GOP’s best chance to pick up a Senate seat this year.

New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont

In strongly conservative and Republican New Hampshire, GOP Gov. Judd Gregg has an edge over his Democratic competitor, former state Democratic Party Chairman Joseph Grandmaison, despite voter discontent over the failing economy.

Grandmaison is campaigning on tax reform, economic development and abortion rights. Gregg counters by highlighting Grandmaison’s ties to Dukakis. Grandmaison worked on Dukakis’ first gubernatorial campaign in Massachusetts in 1974.

A recent poll shows Gregg ahead of Grandmaison, 54% to 21%, with 25% of the voters undecided. But some private surveys in both parties suggest that the race could be much closer, particularly if Gregg’s anti-abortion stance becomes a factor.

In Maine, Republican Gov. John R. McKernan Jr. is vying for reelection against Democratic Rep. Joseph E. Brennan, who is scoring effectively on economic issues. A new survey showed Brennan ahead by 46% to 39%.

In Vermont, former GOP Gov. Richard A. Snelling is favored to return to the job he held for four terms. His opponent is former Democratic state Sen. Peter Welch.

New York and Pennsylvania

New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey, both Democrats, would have been tough to challenge under the best of circumstances. Both are coasting against weak opponents.

In New York, Republicans enlisted a last-minute choice as their candidate, Canadian-born multimillionaire economist Pierre Rinfret (pronounced rin-FRAY), who was not even a registered Republican at the time of his nomination and whose campaign has become a monumental political embarrassment.

His attacks on GOP legislators--including the state senator who tapped him for the party’s gubernatorial nomination--have overshadowed his campaign against Cuomo, who leads Rinfret 60.2% to 14.5%, according to a poll in September.

At one point in his campaign, Rinfret threatened to quit the race because of lack of support and money from GOP leaders.

In Pennsylvania, state Auditor General Barbara Hafer, a former public health nurse and county commissioner from the Pittsburgh area, accepted the task of running against Casey.

Hafer felt she had a strong trump card in her stance in favor of abortion rights, even though it is contrary to her party’s national position and the sentiments of many Pennsylvania Republicans. Polls had shown that Casey’s staunch anti-abortion stand was potentially damaging.

But Hafer’s campaign got off on the wrong foot with a series of blunders and never recovered. For example, her derisive description of Casey as a “redneck Irishman from Scranton” turned off many potential white ethnic Democratic crossover voters.

Polls show Casey with a lead ranging from 40 to almost 50 percentage points.