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Ferrante hardly rooted in party

By Richard Gaines
Staff Writer
Published: August 24, 2008

A child of working class Democrats, Ann-Margaret Ferrante says she gets her political inspiration from the Kennedys.

She cites the late U,S, Sen. Robert Kennedy as her hero, and when she recalls working directly with Sen. Ted Kennedy on behalf of fishermen and their widows, it is with a luminous smile as vivid details pour out.

Yet, as she challenges Democratic state Rep. Anthony Verga and campaigns in the Democratics' three-way primary election race for the Fifth Essex House seat along with Verga and fellow challenger Astrid afKlinteberg, Ferrante is doing so as a newly minted Democrat. She has been a member of the party for less than two years.

Before that, her registration record is fluid, with tidal shifts back and forth between the two parties, and the bulk of her political time spent in the unenrolled middle.

In an interview in her law office, Ferrante explains her flirtations with Republicanism were influenced by her admiration and fealty to state Sen. Bruce Tarr, in whose office she worked at an early part of her career.

Tarr himself is a titular Republican, who scoffs at the importance of labels and believes in "choice" (a woman's right to make her own reproductive decisions), which Ferrante describes as a defining issue for her as well.

She concedes she was foolish to ape Tarr's party choice, and not to see the more profound differences between the values and missions of the two parties. Trying Republicanism was a mistake, she now says.

Ferrante re-joined the Democratic Party on Nov. 29, 2006 shortly after Democrat Deval Patrick won the governor's office from the Republican and then-Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey. Ferrante, who was unenrolled — registered, but without party affiliation — at the time of the election and had been since 2002, joined then-Mayor John Bell, a registered Democrat, and much of the fishing community in supporting Healey. A resident of Beverly, Healey had proved a good friend to the city, especially the fishing community.

Ferrante, 36, has been a registered voter and active participant in government and politics since high school, and recounts her grandmother, Margaret Giacalone's classic parsing of the natures of two parties as: "Democrats are for the poor; Republicans are for the rich."

"In our house, the Kennedy family was big, the family was always Democrats," she said. Yet, she has strayed often — not only to the unenrolled status where the majority of registered voters in Massachusetts seem most comfortable (the combined registration of Democrats and Republicans does not equal the size of the number of unaffiliated) — but into the seemingly alien territory where Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and his son George W. Bush have loomed over Democrats.

Indeed, Ferrante last made a foray into the Republican world in late 2000, days after the second Bush finally was awarded the presidency in the disputed contest with the Democrat Al Gore.

"I voted for Gore on 'choice,'" she says.

"Why did I register as a Republican? Bruce Tarr" was her answer. "I saw someone who represented 'choice.' I wanted to try this" — "this" being a state senator's casually, non-ideological interpretation of what it means to be a Republican.

"Maybe it was my mistake, looking locally," she says. "My description of the Republican Party was Bruce Tarr."

In 2002, two years later, she abandoned the Republicans - for good, she says - immediately after Mitt Romney (with Healey at his side) captured the governor's office to keep it in the Republican Party. It had been there since the third term of Michael Dukakis petered out in 1990, ushering in William Weld. A succession of Republicans followed, until Deval Patrick dispatched Healey two years ago in the race to succeed Mitt Romney.

It took the combination of Romney with Bush to finally show Ferrante the light, she says.

"I listened to Romney and W and got the hell out," Ferrante explains.

On leaving the Republican Party in 2002, Ferrante registered as an unenrolled voter — and that move she describes as strategic.

Bell, just ensconced in the mayor's office, was organizing the Northeast Seafood Coalition, a trade group of fishing interests in New England and New York state. Ferrante, who had managed Bell's mayoral campaign in 2001, was positioned to play a major role in the coalition. It became a force in fighting the draconian restrictions on fishing that were coming through the courts and the Bush administration.

Ferrante says she, Bell and others in the Northeast Seafood Coalition supported Healey against Patrick in the 2006 election because of Healey's willingness and efforts to protect fishing, and her promises to do even more should she win the governor's office. It was soon after Patrick crushed Healey in November 2006 that Ferrante returned to the Democratic flock.

With Hillary Clinton running for president along with Sen. Barack Obama — whom Ferrante recalled giving an inspiring speech at the 2004 convention that nominated Sen. John Kerry — Ferrante says she knew where she belonged.

"It was exciting," she said.

She looks back at her Tarr-inspired days as a Republican with regret.

"It was a big misconception on my part that Bruce fit in," she says. "I didn't spot that as easily as I should have."

She adds, "I don't take any of this registration lightly."

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com

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