A Working Mom Prepares for the Governor’s Chair

All eyes are on Lt. Gov. Jane M. Swift now that Republican Gov. Paul Cellucci’s nomination as ambassador to Canada is official. If Cellucci is confirmed, his politically beleaguered deputy will become this state’s first female governor.

At 35, she’ll be the nation’s youngest governor and the only one pregnant with twins.

“It’s an incredible first,” said Elizabeth Sherman, director of the graduate program Women in Politics and Government at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. “There are enormous questions now about the role of women in politics and how she is going to manage being a mother of very young children and directing, leading and managing a major industrial state.”

In a matter of days, the political landscape here has undergone what state Democratic House Speaker Thomas Finneran and others describe as a “seismic” shift. First, U.S. Rep. Joe Moakley, dean of the state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation, unexpectedly announced that terminal cancer will force him to bow out after 30 years in office. Then President Bush asked Cellucci to represent the United States in Ottawa.

The prospect of Swift, a Republican, becoming governor within several weeks suddenly has given Massachusetts Democrats a realistic shot at reclaiming the governor’s seat for the first time in more than a decade. No election will be held to fill the lieutenant governor slot until 2002.

“It’s just rock-’em, sock-’em action,” said Tobe Berkovitz, a communications professor at Boston University who has served as a Democratic strategist.

Political observers in Massachusetts are wondering not so much what Swift will do as acting governor--she publicly stated that she expected to make no “wholesale” changes--but whether she can juggle policy with progeny, serving as a role model and advocate for working mothers. Many people believe she has failed so far, despite Cellucci’s unwavering support. Swift conceded as much this week, saying she must earn respect and confidence.

“She had a glorious honeymoon, but then she overplayed her hand,” Sherman said. “She thought she could blur the line between public and private life, and she got really badly burned.”

Once the youngest Republican woman to win a state Senate seat, Swift emerged from relative obscurity after Cellucci chose her as his lieutenant governor. She gave birth to her first child just weeks before the 1998 election, but the promising political asset of motherhood soon proved a liability after she asked aides to baby-sit in her office on taxpayers’ time. In September, the state ethics commission fined her $1,250.

She also used a state helicopter to fly home to her sick daughter to avoid Thanksgiving weekend traffic. Her grudging and belated apology failed to thwart the distribution of buttons (“Jane Not So Swift: It Takes an ENTIRE State Government to raise a child”) or to stem plummeting popularity in opinion polls. Thinly veiled attempts at political rehabilitation through various assignments did little good.

“In terms of her substantive impact on public policy, I’m still waiting for it,” said Andi Mullin, Massachusetts chapter president of the National Organization for Women.

Others say Swift is a confident leader and deft policy wonk who will come into her own. For now, she appears to have generated a reservoir of goodwill even among hardened Democrats reluctant to appear as bullies, including a powerful House speaker and a Senate president with gubernatorial aspirations.

“If people stand back and give her a chance, they are going to be surprised,” said Patricia McGovern, who served with Swift in the state Senate.

Finneran, for one, told reporters he doesn’t intend to give Swift a hard time. “She is not at such odds in a personal or philosophical way that you come out swinging and it’s a nonstop food fight,” he said.

The babies are due in June, and Swift said she expects to work full time before and after delivery, barring complications. Swift intends to commute several times a week to her home in western Massachusetts, where her husband stays home caring for their 2-year-old.

“I don’t believe that giving birth to a child or taking the appropriate steps to care for your child while you still meet the requirements of state government result in incapacitation,” she said.

In the end, her family choices shouldn’t matter, Mullin and others said. Blanche Lambert Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, decided not to run for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives while pregnant with twins but later became the youngest female U.S. senator. And Massachusetts state Treasurer Shannon O’Brien became a mother in 1999 while in office.

Mullin said Swift likely will be criticized regardless of whether she takes time off. She will be, said Mullin, like every other working woman: “Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”