Massachusetts Governor Candidates Run as Outsiders : Politics: The race reflects the public’s desire for change after large tax increases and service cuts under Dukakis. The voters ‘are just fed up.’

If Gov. Michael S. Dukakis is the fading sun of Massachusetts politics, John R. Silber and William F. Weld, the men vying to replace him, are competing to be Pluto, as distant a point from him as possible.

Democrat Silber, 64, a philosopher on leave as president of Boston University, and Republican Weld, 45, a former U.S. attorney and Justice Department official, won their parties’ gubernatorial nominations over favored political veterans last month by projecting themselves as outsiders untainted by the fiscal chaos on Beacon Hill.

Now, both are maintaining that pose into the final two weeks of the still unfocused general election. In their animated first debate last week, each pointedly tried to link the other to Dukakis, whose personal approval rating has slipped to near single digits--the kind of numbers Marie Antoinette might have posted on her way to the guillotine.

Their strategies reflect the barbed emotions dominating politics here. With the state reeling from large tax increases and service cuts, “people are just fed up and want to change,” Democratic pollster Brad Bannon said.

A Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll released Tuesday showed Silber ahead of Weld, 41% to 35%. But the poll results have been volatile, and both sides are bracing for a turbulent and unpredictable finish.

Anything else in a race involving Silber would be a shock. Throughout the campaign, he has riveted attention with his incongruously cerebral, mad-as-hell style and his penchant for offending predominantly Democratic groups--from blacks to Jews to the elderly--with acerbic, scolding remarks dubbed “Silber shockers.”

Many Massachusetts activists believe that a victory next month would instantly establish Silber as a leader in the Democratic Party’s conservative wing--and even as a possible future presidential candidate. Conservatives are attracted to his tough approach to foreign affairs, support for a constitutional amendment limiting the terms of state legislators and stress on personal responsibility in domestic policy.

Although he has since softened his comments, he proposed earlier this year that a welfare recipient who has a second illegitimate child face loss of her benefits--and the prospect that, “if she cannot care for her child, her children will be taken away from her . . . .”

But Silber’s cultural conservatism is tempered by economic proposals that liberals welcome: a massive educational day-care program for all needy children beginning at age 3; a 12-cent hike in the state gas tax to fund infrastructure improvements; a state program to guarantee that all qualified high school graduates can “attend college without cost” if they lack the funds to pay for it, and a state industrial planning agency modeled on Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry.

Although Silber says he backs a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, he has called abortion “homicide” and supports legislation that would require any married woman to obtain her husband’s written approval before receiving one.

For those reasons, the state’s largest abortion rights group, Mass Choice, last Friday endorsed Weld, who supports access to abortion.

But Weld’s ability to attract liberals disenchanted with Silber is constrained by his opposition to gun control and his support for Question 3, a controversial ballot initiative that would slash state taxes.

Silber has resolutely opposed the proposal and slammed Weld as irresponsible for supporting it. That message seems to be getting through. The new Globe poll found Question 3 favored by only 28% of those surveyed, with 59% opposed. Weld may have hitched his hopes to a fading star.

“I was very impressed by Weld until he said he was in favor of Question 3,” said Dorothy Amato, a retired schoolteacher, after meeting Weld at a church bazaar in Pittsfield on Saturday. “I’m a realist. If you’re going to pay bills, you’ve got to have money.”

Although it shows signs of becoming the race’s dominant issue, the dispute over Question 3 is a rare ideological intrusion into a contest that so far has drifted down other tracks.

Silber has stressed his experience as an administrator at Boston University and derided Weld as a “lawyer and a bureaucrat”--thus linking him to the political careerists blamed for the state’s problems. During the debate, he poked at Weld, the product of a prosperous family, as the candidate of “inherited wealth.”

For his part, Weld has strenuously sought to tie Silber to the mast of the state Democratic Establishment, constantly reminding audiences that Silber received primary endorsements from state Senate President William M. Bulger and other party insiders.

“Silber says he represents ‘throw the bums out,’ but he’s not going to be able to do it because they are his bums,” Weld said in an interview Saturday while campaigning through Berkshire County.

Even these comparisons may ultimately prove less important than the most personal ones. Silber is such a volcanic personality that many observers here believe the race could finally turn on whether voters are angry enough to accept so polarizing a figure.

Weld has been the more bare-knuckled campaigner--he has aggressively criticized Silber’s record at Boston University, questioned his personal finances and aired several negative ads--but the Republican’s personal style is much gentler than his opponent’s.

“With Weld, there is the promise of change, and yet he seems to be sensible, calm and reasoned,” Republican consultant Todd Domke maintained. “Whereas Silber . . . is somewhat unsettling.”

But that tendency to unsettle is also Silber’s strength, for, in this autumn of discontent, Massachusetts voters may be looking for the candidate who can most disrupt the habits of state government. In a year when voters everywhere are roiling with anger at politicians, this race will measure the boundaries of outrage.