The Democrats’ edge on television is emblematic of a large disparity in overall campaign spending.

As of June 5, Markey had spent some $8.7 million to Gomez’s $2.3 million on everything from salaries to office supplies and TV spots, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Democrat had about $2.3 million in cash on hand with the race entering the home stretch, compared to about $1 million for his Republican opponent.

Outside groups supporting Markey — from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to the League of Conservation Voters — have spent about $3.7 million to date on advertising and get out the vote efforts.

Independent Gomez supporters, meanwhile, have dropped about $850,000 on the race — almost all of it coming from Super PAC Americans for Progressive Action, which is paying for ads criticizing Markey on Medicare and health care reform.

Markey is the favorite in the race. He led Gomez 54-41 in a Boston Globe poll published Sunday.

But analysts say the spending imbalance shows that Democrats, still smarting from Republican Scott Brown’s upset of Martha Coakley in the special U.S. Senate election in 2010, are not taking the race for granted.

“They’re all really bringing resources to bear in a major way, spending five, six or even seven figures, depending on which organization you’re talking about, to support Markey,” said David Levinthal of the Center for Public Integrity, which reports on money and politics. “They’re not taking any chances here.”

Campaign Media Analysis Group, a division of Kantar Media, did not disclose precise advertising figures for the Markey-Gomez contest; the firm, as a matter of policy, does not provide data free of charge.

But Elizabeth Wilner, a vice president at the company, said the Democrats’ advantage over the Republicans runs between 3-2 and 3.5-2.

Political scientists say when the two sides in a campaign spend evenly on television ads, they tend to cancel each other out with voters — whatever the content of their spots.

But a spending imbalance can have an impact, particularly when the candidates targeted in the ads are largely unknown.

Will Ritter, a spokesman for the Gomez campaign, did not dispute the Campaign Media Analysis Group’s numbers. But he brushed aside the Democrats’ spending edge.

“Congressman Ed Markey and his DC friends can waste all the money they want on negative ads,” he said, in a statement. “Gabriel Gomez’s message of reforming Washington, creating jobs and putting people before politics is resonating with the voters of Massachusetts.”

Andrew Zucker, a spokesman for Markey, said “the more voters learn about the clear differences between Ed Markey and Gabriel Gomez on issues like Gomez’s opposition to banning assault weapons and limiting high-capacity magazines and his willingness to support pro-life justices for the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade the clearer it is that Gomez is not on the side of middle-class families in Massachusetts and only Ed Markey can be trusted to fight for the Commonwealth in the Senate.”

Levinthal of the Center for Public Integrity said spending in the special election — operating on a compressed schedule and at an unusual time of year — is already above average for a U.S. Senate race.

The candidates in the last Massachusetts U.S. Senate race, Brown and Democrat Elizabeth Warren, signed a “People’s Pledge” that kept outside groups off the airwaves.

Gomez declined to sign the pledge this time around.

The barrage of independently funded negative TV ads in the closing days of the current campaign, Levinthal said, puts the Bay State in line with the “new normal” for Senate races nationwide.

The sequester slices more than $2 billion from subsidized housing programs across the country. And in Massachusetts, Worcester is one place that could feel the housing squeeze.

The city is not only trying to cope with the housing cuts, it’s also pioneering a pilot project to address the root causes of poverty.

Life In The Great Brook Valley Apartments

To drive down Great Brook Valley Avenue, you wouldn’t guess the poorest of Worcester’s poor live there. The road, curving around rows of two-story brick townhouses, is well paved, the lawns manicured, and birds’ nests in tall shade trees.

“It’s a good neighborhood — quiet, safe, where children are allowed to play safely,” said Adrian, who doesn’t want to use his last name.

He moved with his mother into Great Brook Valley Apartments six years ago. They pay several hundred dollars a month for a two-bedroom duplex. He’s 21 years old and, like half the adult residents there, Adrian didn’t finish high school.

“Dropped out, have two kids, so I had to drop out and get a job,” he said. “For my future I would like to go to school.”

Adrian works food service in a nearby hotel, but he doesn’t make enough to rent on his own. So like the other 2,000 people who call Great Brook Valley home, his apartment is subsidized. This is a federally funded housing project — not Section 8, which provides vouchers for rent in private properties.

Across the road from Great Brook Valley Market, 73-year-old Carlos used a hook on a long stick to fish deposit bottles and cans out of a dumpster.

“That’s what I do, collect cans in the street, you know, make a little money,” he said.

On a good day he makes $30. Nearly 60 percent of Valley residents live below the poverty line.

“I like it. I can’t complain. I’m really grateful that at least I have a roof over my head for my kids and myself,” said Kysha, a 20-something who prefers to go by her first name.

Kysha’s a typical Valley resident in many ways — 75 percent are Hispanic, and women outnumber men 2 to 1. But atypically, she’s married. Her husband works as a driver and she’s studying culinary arts at the local voc-tech. They have two kids — one has autism — and they’ve lived in a townhouse here for about four years.

But Kysha is worried about what might happen if she lost her ability to live at Great Brook because of federal cutbacks.

“Probably I will cry my eyes out cause it’s hard to afford right now something else,” she said. “Because if I have to pay like the gas and the electricity it’s going to be really hard.”

Hard times are nothing new for the tens of thousands of people who’ve made Great Brook Valley their home since 1950. That’s when the federal government built the project to house returning World War II vets and their families.

A Changed Valley, But Stigma Remains?

“This is not the neighborhood you want to grow up in; in fact this is the neighborhood you don’t want to grow up in,” said Raymond Mariano.

But it is the neighborhood Mariano grew up in. His father was a disabled vet, his mother a Canadian immigrant. For 20 years they lived in subsidized housing.

Then Mariano moved up and out. In 1993, he was elected mayor of Worcester and served a record four terms. And for the past decade he’s been the executive director of the Worcester Housing Authority. It operates and maintains 24 projects in the city, including the one where he lived as a kid.

“My family was poor even for this neighborhood,” he said. “So I can recall nine children and two parents living in three bedrooms with one tiny bathroom. It got pretty crowded. And yet I became mayor — maybe because of it.

“I was motivated to do something with my life and to get out of the projects. Maybe I wouldn’t have been as motivated if I grew up someplace else.”

Fond memories, perhaps, but Mariano’s goal today is to make these housing projects history.

“These places are too big, first of all. They should have been bulldozed,” he said. “They are listed on the federal juvenile justice code; they have a rating scale of 1 to 10 — 10 being the worst, impoverished — they’re a 10.”

Poverty breeds violence, Mariano says, and multi-generational dependency.

When he became head of the housing authority he got tough: installed surveillance cameras, hired off-duty police, and took down the signs that marked these red brick apartments as projects.

But Mariano says the stigma remains.

“Kids who live here are always identified as being from the Valley. It is notorious,” he said. “There were riots here, and the fire department would not come here without a police escort. There were shootings. And all of it’s been cleaned up — all of it, all of it, all of it. We arrest them and toss them; we don’t fool around. We’re very serious. There isn’t a neighborhood in this country that can say it’s reduced vice crime by 80 percent.”

But the Valley can. Gone are the nights when police ran out of handcuffs making arrests and the days when abandoned stolen cars littered the parking lots.

Now to make room for the 11,000 people in Worcester in need of subsidized housing — on a waiting list that’s 10 years long — Mariano says he’s tackling the larger social problems of poverty and dependency with the same get-tough tactics he’s used on crime.

“It’s all part of developing a program where people follow the rules,” he said. “And so we want them to know the rules matter, all the rules. I believe that every person who is able-bodied and not a senior should be required to go to school or work to receive public housing or leased housing. And we have now have a pilot program in place that we just started that requires them to do just that.

“But don’t work it out on your own. We’ll help you. Let us help you work it out.”

Sequestration Looms Large Over Pilot Program

“Yeah, we’re in the program in housing,” said David Mangabanga. “It’s called Better Life. And they help you. They help you get your own place, your own house.”

Mangabanga is one of the first Valley residents going through the Better Life program. It’s the first of its kind in the nation, and funded by the nonprofit The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts. The Worcester Housing Authority uses the half-million-dollar-a-year grants to provide lessons in personal finance, health and fitness and job training to residents such as Mangabanga.

He lives in the Valley with his wife and two young daughters, who are 10 and 11. Asked if he wants his kids to live in the Valley, he said: “Hells no.”

“I want them to get a good job and get out of this place,” he said. “Finish school, go to college and get out of here.”

But the Better Life program could have a short half-life. While Massachusetts has recently increased money for state-subsidized housing, 85 percent of Worcester’s $60 million-a-year budget comes from the federal government. So sequestration looms large.

The city’s housing authority recently laid off 15 employees, but so far it’s been able to stave off rental increases. However, in coming years, as the mandated cuts continue, the subsidies will spiral down and ultimately residents — mostly the elderly and disabled — will be paying full-market rates.

These are tough times, says Worcester housing chief Mariano, and require a tough response.

“My job is not to worry about sequestration; that’s somebody else’s job,” he said. “My job is to take what they give me and find a way to figure it out because my worrying, all that does is take my eye off the ball. My job is to plant new trees, to cut the grass, to fix the buildings, and to implement this new program that I’m excited about, which I believe will change public housing.

“Public housing is no longer a stop along the way, it is the way. And the only way to change that is to say, go to work, go to school and get out of here. Go have a happy life somewhere else.”

That somewhere else could be Section 8 housing, Mariano says. He’s a big supporter of federal subsidies for tenants who rent from private landlords.

But sequestration is reducing that voucher program, and with an estimated 80,000 people in Massachusetts on waiting lists for subsidized housing, there is no shelter from the sequester storm.

Related Coverage:

• Sequester To Squeeze Minute Man National Park
• Uncertainty Looms Over Mass. Defense Industry
• Sequester Hits Mass. Medical Industry On Multiple Fronts
• As NIH Funding Shrinks, Mass. Biomedical Researchers Compete For Fewer Grants

The most recent incident was the brazen daytime murder of 45-year-old Charles Evans, who was found shot several times in a driveway on Belmont Street last month. It turns out that the accused murderer, who was released because of the drug lab problems, was arrested a few months before the murder on other charges — and released again.

Just eight months before Evans’ murder, 22-year-old Donta Hood was released from prison after serving three years of a five-year sentence on cocaine charges. His case was dismissed because Annie Dookhan tested the drug evidence. Dookhan is the former state chemist accused of falsifying drug tests.

Brockton Police Chief Emmanuel Gomes says the lab scandal is frustrating his entire department.

“Police officers for the most part have this frustration with the revolving door of justice. With the scandal the door has picked up speed,” Gomes said. “It’s not just a Brockton thing. These people will be released into communities and they will re-offend; some were habitual offenders so they’re not not going to re-offend.”

Hood was quickly accused of re-offending, even before he was charged with Evans’ murder. Just four months after his release from prison because of the Dookhan-related case, Hood was arrested in Wareham on charges of having an unlicensed loaded gun. Hood initially posted $500 bail but didn’t show up for his arraignment. A few weeks later he did show up and posted $2,500 bail.

Some Brockton residents are outraged and say a dangerousness hearing should have been held. Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz says his office had asked for a higher bail.

“All we can do is ask for bail,” he said. “Unfortunately he made his bail that was set after he had not shown up on his original bail. But at the end of the day I don’t blame anybody for the murder of Mr. Evans other than those who shot and killed Mr. Evans.”

Mr. Evans also was no stranger to police. He was facing charges of attempted murder and witness intimidation at the time of his death.

And Evans is not the only tragedy in Brockton involving a drug lab case. Twenty-one-year-old Malcom Desir, of Brockton, had his drug case dismissed in March. He now faces charges in a shootout with State Police last month. Three months after 23-year-old Teshawn Leslie had his drug charges dropped, he was found murdered in his car in Brockton.

City public safety advocates are concerned.

“It is a definite issue with public safety because as we know the scandal or the crisis; we’re in the middle of it,” said John Messia, who leads the public safety campaign for the Brockton Interfaith Community. He’s been working on safety because the violent crime rate in Brockton is among the highest of all urban areas of Massachusetts.

Messia says the drug lab crisis has prompted the formation of more neighborhood watch groups, but the real problem, he says, is that there are not enough services in the city to help people once they’ve served their sentences.

“You’re seeing people released without enough focus and reviewing the cases individually,” Messia said. “What do they have to return to? Do they have transitional services? Different ways and programs to not fall back in the same lifestyle that put them there in the first place.”

Others in Brockton say despite the violence allegedly linked to drug lab cases, you can’t blame the lab.

“I don’t think the drug lab is a problem at all. I hope they all get out,” said the Rev. Michael Walker of the Messiah Baptist Church. He says the problem with drugs and crime in Brockton is bigger than the lab and won’t be properly addressed by the increased patrols promised by police.

“Rather than focus on the drug lab, which is the lowest hanging fruit,” Walker said, “we need to focus on this unjust war on drugs. Why not focus on preventing and solving serious crimes in this community?”

State public safety officials say since the drug lab problems were first identified last summer, 325 people have been released from incarceration. One unofficial estimate is that more than 30 defendants were released in Plymouth County, where Brockton is located.

Attorney Jason Benzakin is a point person for litigating many of the drug lab cases in the county. He says the pace of releasing defendants has slowed. And he’s concerned that the recent spate of violence could delay things even further.

“Because of the substantial impact of Annie Dookhan on a lot of these cases and individuals, it might seem like there’s one source to look at to say, ‘Hey, she’s responsible and now look what’s happening’,” Benzakin said. “At the same time if you look at each of these individuals alone there’s a real question about whether justice was achieved in their cases. Our concern about individuals committing new offenses I don’t think should come into consideration.”

As for Hood, he’s scheduled to appear in court on the murder charges Friday.

Hood’s lawyer, Lefteris Travayiakis, says Hood looks forward to his day in court and there is a lot more to the case that will come forward once the allegations are thoroughly investigated.

BOSTON — With two weeks to go until the special Massachusetts U.S. Senate election, a new WBUR poll (PDFs – topline, crosstabs) suggests Republican Gabriel Gomez is struggling to chip away at Democrat Edward Markey’s small, but consistent lead.

The survey, conducted after the first televised debate between the two candidates, shows Markey with a 46-39 edge.

The Democrat’s lead hasn’t changed much since the last WBUR poll, from early May, which gave him an eight-point edge.

It also hews closely to a Suffolk University survey released Monday.

“The race really isn’t moving very far, very fast — and time is running out,” said Steve Koczela, president of the MassINC Polling Group, which conducts surveys for WBUR.

The new poll of 500 likely voters, conducted June 6-9, suggests two key blocs have held steady over the last month.

Women continue to favor Markey by wide margins — his 17-point edge in the May WBUR poll is now at 20 points.

And Gomez’s advantage with independents — his three-point lead is now a five-point edge — remains too small for a Republican trying to engineer an upset in a blue state like Massachusetts.

“He’s not doing what he needs to do,” Koczela said. “As a Republican, you need to run up a pretty significant score among…independents. We’re talking 30 to 35 points.”

Gomez’s Message Not Resonating

Gomez, a son of immigrants and former Navy SEAL, has put a heavy emphasis on biography.

And his story has proven attractive to the electorate — 40 percent of likely voters say they have a “favorable” view of Gomez, compared to 27 percent who have an “unfavorable” view.

But the WBUR survey suggests voters have an equally favorable view of Markey. And likability doesn’t seem to be much of a factor in voter preference.

Asked to rank a series of issues as “very important,” “somewhat important,” “not too important” or “not at all important” in deciding whom to support, just 24 percent said “which candidate seems like a more likable person” is “very important.”

Biography is not the only theme of the Gomez campaign. He’s taken pains to cast Markey — a 37-year veteran of the U.S. House of Representatives — as a tired insider who needs to go.

Just 17 percent of voters, though, said “how many years each candidate has spent in Washington” is “very important” in deciding whom to back in the election.

Gomez does lead his opponent among the relatively small subset of voters who deemed tenure in Washington or likability a “very important” issue. But Markey, who has emphasized policy and value differences, seems to be playing on more favorable ground.

Seventy-two percent of voters said “which candidate agrees with you on key issues that matter to you” is “very important.” Seventy percent said “which candidate will stand up for people like you” is “very important.” And 60 percent said “which candidate will stand up for women’s issues while in the Senate” is “very important.”

Markey led among all three cohorts of voters. And the gap was yawning — 26 points — among those who said “women’s issues” are “very important.” Little wonder the Democrat has made abortion a central issue in the campaign.

Gomez’s standing among women, meanwhile, seems to be slipping. His favorable-unfavorable rating and vote totals among female voters both declined between the May and June WBUR polls.

A series of three surveys from Democratic-affiliated Public Policy Polling shows a similar trend.

Women, who tend to vote in larger numbers than men, have proved a difference-maker in recent competitive Massachusetts elections.

In a U.S. Senate special election in 2010, Democrat Martha Coakley won women by just three points, according to a post-election survey commissioned by The Washington Post. Republican Scott Brown won men by 14 points and scored an upset victory.

Later that year, women voted for Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick over Republican challenger Charlie Baker by a 24-point margin, according to a post-election MassINC poll, carrying the incumbent to re-election.

And last fall, exit polls show, Democrat Elizabeth Warren rode an 18-point edge among women to a victory over then-U.S. Sen. Brown.

Lynch Voters Backing Markey

Markey defeated the more conservative U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch in the Democratic primary. And there was some question about whether he’d be able to unite the party in the general election.

The WBUR poll shows Markey has had moderate success. He leads Gomez among Democrats 66-15 — a solid margin, but well short of the 89 percent of the Democratic vote Warren racked up in her defeat of Brown last fall.

When it comes to Lynch supporters in particular, Markey leads Gomez 49-36.

“Markey is doing what he needs to do among Lynch voters,” Koczela said. “Sure, he’d like to have more…but he has as many as he needs now.”

If Markey is doing as well as required among conservative Democrats, there is some evidence that Gomez — a moderate Republican — is struggling to inspire the right edge of his own party.

When WBUR asked respondents to the new poll which candidates they’d voted for in the Democratic and Republican primaries, 69 percent of those who cast a ballot in the GOP contest said they’d backed Gomez – well above the 51 percent he actually garnered.

The disparity might be a matter of faulty recall or respondents wanting to align, in retrospect, with a winner.

But amid anecdotal evidence that the Massachusetts right is less-than-enthused about Gomez, Koczela said it could also be a sign that conservatives have decided to sit out the general election altogether — landing outside WBUR’s pool of likely voters.

Among Republicans who say they will vote, Gomez leads 80-8. It’s a substantial margin, but he is not yet garnering the 90 to 95 percent of the GOP vote that recent statewide Republican candidates have accumulated.

Voter Fatigue? Perhaps Not

Light turnout in the primaries suggests a public disengaged from the Senate race.

Among the leading theories: After a string of Bay State elections in recent years, voters are simply tired of politics.

But the WBUR poll suggests that the conventional wisdom may be flawed.

Sixty-six percent of voters said they are paying “about the same amount” of attention to this election as previous Massachusetts elections. Eleven percent said they are paying “more attention” and 22 percent said they are paying “less attention.”

Of those paying less attention, most said they are busy with other things or uninspired by the campaign. Just 3 percent said there have been too many elections in Massachusetts recently.

Bay State voters aren’t tired of campaigns, it seems. They just want good ones.

The WBUR survey, conducted with live telephone interviews, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent. Markey’s 46-39 lead includes undecided voters leaning one way or the other. Without leaners, he has a 43-36 edge. Markey’s lead in the May WBUR poll was six points without leaners, eight points with them.

MBTA officials aren’t sure what’s causing the increase in attacks on bus drivers, but are hoping more technology, new legislation and increased public awareness will help.

There are more than 180 MBTA bus routes in eastern Massachusetts, with 1,100 buses driven by some 6,000 drivers, carrying 400,000 people a day.

Transit Police Effort

Joseph O’Connor, superintendent-in-chief of the MBTA Transit Police, leads the battle against assaults on MBTA drivers.

“It’s very dangerous. These operators are operating heavy vehicles with passengers on public ways, and any assault on an operator really puts the public as a whole at risk,” O’Connor explained. “We put our officers where the problems are — it’s the whole cops-on-dots philosophy of where we should put police officers.”

But increasingly there are more dots than cops. O’Connor believes growing frustration with fare hikes and service cuts plays a role.

“This is where we see quite often where the assaults come from, where an operator is trying to collect the fare from someone and, for whatever reason, the person will assault the bus operator — and in quite a few instances we see they’re spitting on the operator,” O’Connor said.

With just 271 transit police officers, the MBTA is increasingly turning to science to stop the violence.

“We also instituted a program where we collect DNA now,” O’Connor said. “We’ll submit that DNA to a state lab for analysis to see if at some point we can make contact between the suspect and the assault and solve those cases.”

Types Of Assaults

A rider was sentenced last week to three months in prison for choking a driver. But, for some reason, spitting is the most frequent assault, accounting for 40 percent of the attacks on MBTA bus drivers.

“It’s probably the most degrading thing that you can have happen to you as a human being,” said John Lee, who drove an MBTA bus for 13 years and now serves as president of the Carmen’s Union Local 589, which represents MBTA operators.

“I would rather myself be hit than spit on. It’s something that should never be tolerated,” he said.

Lee detailed a variety of assaults.

“We have people — they cut you, they bite you. We’ve had people take urine in cups and throw them at drivers. And bodily fluids is a real concern,” he said. “I have a member who was assaulted. And it was learned that the female had hepatitis C. So now my member, who’s a single mom, had to be tested for hepatitis C, not knowing if she’s contracted this disease through just simply coming to work and doing her job. It has to stop.”

The Loophole

But there’s a problem, Lee says.

Under current Massachusetts law, unless a transit officer actually sees the attack in progress, there’s little police can do except issue a summons and hope the suspect shows up in court.

“This is the scenario: I can have a 5-foot-nothing, 100-pound female driving a bus, have a 6-foot-4 male, 250 pounds, smash her across her face, blood, visual evidence of an assault. Witnesses on the bus, when the police arrive, point to the individual that did it, and they cannot arrest him,” he said. “That’s reality.”

Proposed Legislation

State Rep. Jim Miceli, of Tewksbury, has introduced legislation that would allow transit police to arrest a suspect based on statements from the riders and driver — even if the officer did not actually witness the assault.

“I just felt they should be protected,” he said.

Miceli’s proposal came after a particularly vicious attack in March when a mob of a dozen or more young people beat up a bus driver in Dorchester at 1 a.m. So far, only two suspects have been arrested.

“You’ve got people whose lives are in jeopardy, so to me it was a no-brainer,” Miceli said.

Public Awareness Campaign

Recently the MBTA began broadcasting public service announcements on radio. And, as part of a public awareness campaign, there are new signs on the backs of some bus seats, which make it look like the rider in front is handcuffed.

The T has also introduced their See Say App for smartphones. Superintendent-in-Chief O’Connor said riders can use it if they they see an attack to send text messages to dispatchers.

“One of the unique features of that is they can also snap a picture of offenders or people that are creating problems and, in that app, it shuts off the flash so they can do that anonymously,” O’Connor explained.

Prevention And Surveillance

The MBTA will soon begin a pilot program installing barriers on some buses to protect drivers, but most buses already have an emergency switch that operators can hit if they’re attacked. It sets off flashing green lights outside of their vehicles.

Some buses — a third of the MBTA’s fleet — also have video cameras. The footage of assaults is posted on the websites of the MBTA and the Carmen’s Union. More buses will get cameras when money for the financially strapped transit service becomes available.

Lee is all for cameras but said they can give drivers a false sense of security.

“Videos are not here to prevent anything. Any kind of attack, any kind of vandalism, any kind of anything. All’s a video does is record it so that they know who did, they know how it was done,” Lee said. “I can only liken it to our terrorist attack on Marathon Monday — there were cameras everywhere. It didn’t stop it from occurring, but the use of those cameras allowed our agencies to go after of those who did it and find them.”

Civil Liberties At Stake?

But post-Boston Marathon bombing, there are growing concerns about overreacting and relying too much on surveillance technology.

“It’s not simply, ‘Do we want more cameras on the buses today?’ ” said Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Project at the ACLU of Massachusetts. “It’s ‘Do we want more cameras on the buses today and do we want them to be networked and do we want them to have incredibly powerful technologies built into the back end that enable the government to identify everybody who walks onto the bus simply using their face?’ There’s a reason that we don’t tattoo our Social Security numbers on our foreheads, right? But face recognition obliterates that distinction.”

So far, that technology is not being used on the MBTA, but Crockford said that in order to ensure the safety of drivers, riders and civil liberties, there has to be a serious public discussion. And that’s something that the president of the union and the superintendent of the transit police agree has to happen.

In the last years of his life, he threw himself into efforts to raise money for research, ultimately helping to bring in nearly $2 million.

Cellucci died at his home in Hudson on Saturday from complications of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a progressive neurodegenerative condition that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. He was 65.

“He knew this wasn’t going to help him, but he was determined that he could help others by working together with us,” said Dr. Michael Collins, chancellor of the UMass Medical School. “In many ways this was the act of a selfless public servant, right up to the end.”

Cellucci spent most of his adult life in politics, starting at the local level in his hometown of Hudson. In more than three decades, he never lost an election. He was a typically moderate New England Republican, fiscally conservative yet middle of the road on many social issues.

He was elected lieutenant governor on a ticket with one-time rival William Weld in 1990 and became acting governor in 1997 when Weld resigned to pursue an ambassadorship. Cellucci was elected governor in his own right in 1998, and in 2001 the Bush administration made him U.S. ambassador to Canada.

“This son of Hudson, Mass., was a close and loyal friend, a superb public servant, and a devoted family man – and our admiration for the way he served throughout his life, and fought a dreaded disease at the end, knows no bounds,” George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush said in a joint statement Saturday.

Cellucci was a longtime friend of the elder Bush, whose Massachusetts presidential campaigns he led, and was one of the first GOP governors to stoke the younger Bush’s presidential ambitions.

He was born in Hudson, a working-class town where his father owned car dealerships. He graduated from Boston College, where he served in the Reserve Officers Training Corps, and received a degree from Boston College Law School in 1973.

He was still in school when he was first elected to the Hudson Charter Commission in 1970. He went on to serve on the Hudson Board of Selectmen and in both the state House and Senate.

Cellucci and Weld started as rivals before teaming up to run as a GOP ticket in 1990.

Cellucci’s personality was more reserved than Weld’s, but he played a much larger role than a typical lieutenant governor and was credited with guiding Weld, a former federal prosecutor and political neophyte, through the political process.

Weld often called Cellucci his “co-governor” and relied on him to work with Democrats and fellow Republicans in the Legislature to help push the administration’s agenda.

“Paul Cellucci was simply one of the finest human beings I have ever met,” Weld said in a statement. “I happened to know him in the realm of politics and government, but anyone who knew him in any other arena would have found the same man: a person of rock-hard integrity, keen intelligence, considerable humor, abundant compassion, and deep devotion to family and country.”

After fending off a nasty primary challenge by state Treasurer Joe Malone in the 1998 GOP primary, Cellucci faced Attorney General Scott Harshbarger in the November election, which he won with 51 percent of the vote.

His departure to become an ambassador paved the way for his lieutenant governor, Jane Swift, to become the state’s first female chief executive.

“Paul’s long record of public service was consistently defined by grace, integrity and common sense, qualities that are all too scarce in modern politics,” Swift said in a statement.

In addition to his more serious pursuits, Cellucci was known as a dedicated film buff. One of his favorite movies was the Coen brothers’ classic “The Big Lebowski.” Cellucci, who bore a resemblance to Robert De Niro, could also be persuaded to offer up his impersonation of De Niro’s character from “Taxi Driver.”

The former governor revealed in January 2011 that he had ALS, formally known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. More than 5,600 people are diagnosed every year.

“I’m leading a normal, private life. I will always be truly grateful for the opportunity to have served 35 years in public service,” he said in a statement to The Associated Press at the time.

Soon after, he helped launch the UMass ALS Champion Fund to support ALS research being led by Dr. Robert Brown.

Brown said Cellucci was very interested in the research being done at the school and would remember every nuance of a conversation about it six months later.

“He impressed me as being a man of extraordinary integrity,” Brown said.

Collins, the chancellor, said Cellucci was very proud of the school and did as much as he could on its behalf, even when his energy was sapped.

“His mind was keen throughout his illness and he worked as hard as anybody I’ve ever seen to help us succeed at this effort,” Collins said. “It was really pretty extraordinary.”

Secretary of State John Kerry, until recently a Massachusetts senator, said the former governor had called the state department just a few months ago to advocate for a Massachusetts family, which was “quintessential Paul Cellucci.”

“He always had time to ask about your family, and always had a twinkle in his eye about the great journey he’d taken from Hudson to the governor’s office and on to representing America in Canada,” Kerry said. “I can’t help but think of the final high standard Paul set in the way he battled ALS. The twinkle was still there, even from his wheelchair.”

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird called Cellucci “a great friend to Canada” who served “as the top American diplomat … at critical time of 9/11 and its aftermath.”

“We are grateful for his contributions to the bilateral relationship, both as ambassador and as governor of Massachusetts,” Baird said.

Cellucci is survived by his wife, Jan, their daughters Kate and Anne, and four grandchildren.

• Remembering Former Mass. Gov. Paul Cellucci
• “That Twinkle In His Eye”: Jane Swift Reflects On Paul Cellucci
• 2012 Interview: Former Gov. Cellucci On His Political Career And Living With ALS

And in their first of three televised debates Wednesday night, the men who would succeed him — U.S. Rep. Edward Markey and his Republican opponent Gabriel Gomez — did their best to change that dynamic.

Gomez, an underdog in a deep blue state, took an aggressive tack from the opening moments. And Markey, who’s faced criticism for a light campaign schedule and less-than-inspiring campaign, mounted a feisty defense of his record and pushed to tie his opponent to a national GOP unpopular in Massachusetts.

But if the candidates injected a new energy into the race, analysts said, they probably did not alter its trajectory in any fundamental way.

“Nobody clearly dominated the other,” said Peter Ubertaccio, a political science professor at Stonehill College.

The status quo, at the moment, favors Markey, who held a 52-40 lead on Gomez in the most recent independent poll in the race.

But Gomez’s task Wednesday night was not to elicit some game-changing moment, Ubertaccio argued. Those rarely come out of debates.

“For example, when [Republican presidential candidate Mitt] Romney dominated [President] Obama in the first presidential debate [last year], the next day people were breathless, thinking the race had changed,” he said. “And it hadn’t changed.”

As the lesser-known candidate, the political scientist said, Gomez’s task was to present himself as a credible alternative to the long-serving Markey — giving voters a reason to take another look at the GOP nominee before they cast ballots on June 25.

There, Gomez fared reasonably well. He was relatively fluid on the issues: raising concerns about the costs Obamacare will impose on small business, for instance, and making a straightforward argument for tax cuts.

“Less taxes equal more jobs,” he said, at one point.

But the Republican did stumble from time to time. In an otherwise cogent discussion of the conflict in Syria — Gomez suggested the Obama administration has not done enough to oust President Bashar al-Assad — he said “we have a great opportunity here to make sure we align ourselves with the right terrorist group” and defeat the regime.

He quickly corrected himself and said the U.S. needs to back the “right rebel group,” ensuring that whoever takes over Syria promotes peace and democracy in the Middle East.

But the gaffe, if it gets enough play in the press, could undermine an otherwise solid bid for credibility, Ubertaccio said.

Markey, for his part, did his best to align Gomez with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other unpopular national GOP figures.

“You’re going to hear a lot from Mr. Gomez about how he’s a new kind of Republican,” he said at the start of the debate sponsored by WBZ-TV and The Boston Globe. “But you’re going to hear the same, old, stale Republican ideas.”

Markey zeroed in on Gomez’s opposition to bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. He attacked the GOP candidate for opposing tax hikes on the wealthy. He hit his opponent for weighing cuts in Social Security benefits.

In one lengthy exchange, Markey said he would not vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision legalizing abortion. Gomez, who calls himself personally pro-life but pledges not to be an activist on the issue in Washington, would make no such pledge.

And when Gomez repeated a line he’s offered up several times on the campaign trail — claiming that Markey hasn’t passed a single piece of legislation in the last 20 years — the Democrat was incredulous.

“Mr. Gomez, you couldn’t be more wrong,” he said, ticking off a list of several bills he’d authored in recent years that became law: one creating a new, national effort to combat Alzheimer’s disease, another designed to improve wireless Internet access for the deaf and blind and a third promoting elder home care.

None of the bills went directly to the president’s desk. But as WBUR reported last month in a fact check of Gomez’s claim, several of the measures Markey offered over the last two decades were incorporated into larger bills that became law. In other cases, nearly identical Senate legislation won the president’s signature.

If the debate focused largely on issues, Gomez worked to shift it from time to time to something broader.

The Republican, hitting on a theme he’s emphasized throughout the campaign, cast himself as an exemplar of bipartisanship taking on a tired political insider who needs to go.

At the start of the debate, after thanking the debate’s sponsors and the viewing audience, he said: “Congressman Markey, after 37 years in D.C., welcome back to Boston.”

Gomez also tried to paint himself as the anti-politician, saying he would speak “from the heart.”

Paul Moore, who served as campaign manager for Gomez’s Republican primary opponent Michael Sullivan, has argued that Gomez needs to present himself as more than a likable character if he’s to pull off the upset.

The GOP nominee, he’s said, needs to distinguish himself on a couple of reforms popular with the electorate.

Moore said Gomez moved in that direction Wednesday night, making a strong argument for term limits and talking about small business owners’ concerns about the costs imposed by Obamacare.

The GOP nominee also singled out an element of Obamacare — a tax on medical devices — that could prove particularly burdensome for Massachusetts. Both candidates oppose the tax, but Gomez argues Markey hasn’t done enough to overturn it.

The critique, Moore noted, came amid a growing press narrative around the unexpected costs of the president’s health care law. But that narrative will have to grow stronger, he said, if Gomez’s message is to move the electorate in a significant way.

It’s an argument that points to the role of the debate in any insurgent campaign: it may not shift the race in a fundamental way, but if played right, it can help to encourage a broader shift.

The question for Gomez: will that broader shift come?

A proposal to freeze those rates could come to a Hill vote this week. And Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is pushing her own stopgap measure that would radically reduce interest rates for one year. It’s the first piece of legislation she’s introduced since being elected last November, and while it’s drawing some support, it’s also attracted scorn.

Bank On Students Loan Fairness Act

Twenty-one-year-old Diamond Reddick of Boston faces a choice Sen. Warren says should be easier. Talking with an adviser at a student loan assistance center at the Boston Public Library, Reddick says that to enroll in her preferred occupational therapy program next year she’d need loans and grants worth up to $20,000 a year.

The decision, she says, will affect not only her own pocketbook, but her mother’s and sister’s as well.

“We can’t afford to really go to a school that I want to go to, so I have to put everyone into the situation when making the decision, which makes it hard, but it’s what I have to do,” Reddick said.

It could get a lot harder if Congress doesn’t act now: Interest rates on federally subsidized Stafford Loans are set to double on July 1 to 6.8 percent. President Obama is proposing a fix. House Republicans have a plan. And Sen. Warren does, too.

The Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act is the only bill Warren has submitted since her election last year. She pitched it at a recent meeting of education leaders in Boston.

“There’s data now suggesting that young people are delaying buying homes,” Warren said. “Families are crushed by student loan debt and this means they can’t support an economic recovery.”

Warren says a long-term solution will have to wait. As a stopgap for the next fiscal year, she wants the interest rate on new loans for lower-income students rolled back to the same discounted rate the Fed offers big banks for so-called “overnight” loans — 0.75 percent.

The comparison fits neatly with the kind of populist rhetoric Warren used in her campaign — contrasting the needs of the poor and middle class with perks for the “fat cats” of the U.S. economy.

“These are the same banks that cost millions of Americans their jobs and nearly broke the economy,” Warren said this week in a conference call that MoveOn.org says drew more than 10,000 listeners. “And a student who takes out a loan later this summer, if Congress doesn’t act, will have to pay nine times as much on her debt as big banks would. It isn’t right, it isn’t fair, and it isn’t good economic policy.”

Nearly 450,000 people have signed a MoveOn petition in support for Warren’s bill. But conservatives are panning it. And the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank, is calling it “a cheap political gimmick.”

“I think it is entirely symbolic,” said Brookings fellow Matthew Chingos. He and other critics say Warren is comparing apples to oranges — low-risk banks taking short-term loans, versus high-risk students getting long-term aid.

“Perhaps, though, it’s what a lot of her constituents want to see,” Chingos added. “And it has a nice ring to it if you don’t know anything about how interest rates work.”

According to Tufts University political science professor Jeff Berry, Warren is veering slightly from the freshman senator’s traditional mantra: Keep your head down. But Warren gets respect in the Senate, he says, because of her ties to the White House, her public reputation as a financial watchdog and her proven fundraising ability.

And she’s made a savvy choice on the issue, Berry adds.

“Given that Massachusetts has so many college students and so many universities, it’s a natural position for a liberal Democrat to push on this issue because it’s going to resonate with the voters and it’s going to raise her profile with people that could vote for her for decades,” Berry said.

Even supporters of the Warren bill say it’s not likely to see a vote. But she’s also signed on to a more likely vehicle co-sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. It’s a two-year fix that would freeze rates at the current 3.4 percent. Votes on that are expected as early as Wednesday.

Whatever temporary solution emerges, Warren has put down a marker for debate next year, when broad higher education legislation is up for reauthorization.

• Obama Presses Congress On Student Loan Rates
• If Employment Game Has Changed, Who’s Teaching The Rules?

“Take your act somewhere else, OK?” said Ralph Evans, who served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. He blames the Republican Party for the war in Afghanistan.

“My country has been driven right into the ground by people of that party. My brothers in arms are getting their ass blown away because of what his party did,” Evans said. “No army in the history of the world has ever succeeded in Afghanistan. Alexander of Macedonia couldn’t do it. The British couldn’t do it. The Russians couldn’t do it. And we’re not going to do it. And all we’re doing is getting ourselves bled dry, bled dry.”

Evans ties Gomez to the Republican Party. But Gomez has come to the diner precisely to distance himself from Republican policies that have alienated many Americans. Gomez says he wants to go to Washington to move his party in a different direction.

“I’m a new Republican, and I’m going to make this a new Republican Party,” he said. “Now, I’m sure in the next few months, when I get down to D.C., a lot of my comrades in the Republican Party are going to think I’m a major pain in the butt, but I’m OK with that.”

As Evans hisses in the background, Gomez says if elected he wants to help his party by moving it in five new ways.

“I’m going to help [the Republican Party] appeal to all Americans, as opposed to the privileged few. I’m going to help them with gay marriage, I’m pro-gay-marriage. I’m a green Republican, I believe in climate change. I’m going to get more of them to come over on my side,” Gomez said. “I believe in immigration reform, I’m going to get more of my Republican counterparts to come along with me. And I believe in gun control and expanded background checks.”

Gomez pointed out that only four Republicans supported expanded background checks the last time the issue was up for a vote in the Senate. He promises to rally more Republicans and more conservative Democrats. He is trying to counter efforts by his Democratic rival Rep. Ed Markey to tie him to Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and McConnell’s plans to obstruct President Obama.

“Well, Mitch McConnell sent out a fundraising email last week saying that he needs Gabriel Gomez in Washington, that Gabriel Gomez is a central part of his plan to take over the United States Senate for the Republican Party,” Markey said at the Hebrew Senior Life Center in Brookline. “And coupled with the Republican control of the United States House of Representatives, that would pretty much signal an end to the Obama agenda in our country.”

Markey was in Brookline to receive the endorsement of Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy and niece of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. She argued that Markey, who has been in Congress for 37 years, would work with Republicans just as Gomez promises to work with Democrats.

“I think that Ed has demonstrated throughout his career ability to work across the aisle, and I think that’s a tremendous advantage in Massachusetts, to have somebody with the experience and the knowledge of how this very complex system works,” Kennedy said. “And I certainly saw that up close with my uncle Teddy. To master that process is really something that takes time and dedication.”

In a way, this U.S. Senate race is replaying some of the themes of the last one. Elizabeth Warren won in part because she successfully undercut Scott Brown’s appeal as an independent Republican. She did it by tying him to Mitch McConnell. Markey is reviving the strategy in the hope that it will appeal to Massachusetts voters once again.

• GOP Senate Hopeful Gomez Slams Own Party

For a preview of the trial, Morning Edition spoke with WBUR reporter David Boeri, who has been following the Bulger case for years and who will cover the trial in the months ahead.

Bob Oakes: That the defendant is charged with 19 murders is extraordinary all by itself, but remind us why even beyond that the trial is quite extraordinary.

David Boeri: Start with the fact that those charges are on the shelf because Bulger famously fled town at the end of 1994 when he got tipped off by his former FBI handler that he was about to be arrested. That was 18 years ago. But what really makes this extraordinary is for all those years, Bulger was on the government books as a secret, top-echelon informant. And there is overwhelming evidence that he was protected from prosecution by the FBI, FBI agents. He was even aided and abetted in some of his crimes by those same agents.

Eleven of those 19 murders were committed while Bulger was on the government’s books as an informant on the “war on crime,” so to speak.

That’s the allegation. The records show Bulger being recruited in the fall of 1975 in order to help the government fulfill the goal at the time, which was to bring down the Mafia. And, yet, within short order — it’s charged — back in 1975, he kills two people in his own gang, and then he uses his informant status with the FBI right away to point investigators who are investigating those two murders in another direction. And there is worse: The government alleges Bulger was tipped off to people who were informing on him, and he then killed them.

Big picture — give us a sense of the scope of this trial.

Extraordinary, again, in just sheer numbers. It’s anticipated the trial’s going to run for as long as four months. The government’s listed about 83 potential witnesses. The defense has listed 78 and another half dozen or so expert witnesses. The timeframe covers years of history. The murders span a period from 1973 to 1985. And then the government’s also going to prove extortion, money laundering, weapons violations. It’s going to be phenomenally challenging trial.

What are we likely to see in the next few months in this trial?

In many ways this really is going to be a replay of two previous trials — the trials of John Connelly. He’s Bulger’s FBI handler. He had a trial in 2002 and another in 2008 in Miami. So many of the same witnesses who were called to those trials are going to be called to this trial.

And the main event, perhaps, of this trial is going to be old partner Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi getting on the stand. He’s going to accuse Bulger of killing two women. Bulger is expected to accuse Flemmi of killing them. And then we have the FBI’s John Morris; and the last time Morris spoke to Bulger was while Bulger was a fugitive. He made a surprise phone call to Morris, and after that phone call Morris went into cardiac arrest. He retired soon after. So we are going to see some very, very dramatic encounters here.

You think “Whitey” Bulger will take the stand?

This is what’s undoubtedly going to be the highlight of this trial and sort of the death-defying circus act because Bulger has promised through his attorney that he is going to take the stand. What is he going to say? Is he going to use the occasion to defend himself from the charges? Is he going to aim somehow desperately for an acquittal, which seems a very far-fetched idea here? Or is he going to use the time to settle scores?

What are the big trial issues at play here?

The two issues that were most important to the defense have really been cut off by the presiding judge. Bulger wanted to make the argument that any and all crimes he committed — including murder — he had received immunity from by the Department of Justice. Now, as outlandish as that might seem, the idea that someone might have a license to kill from the Department of Justice — had that gone forward, it would have been profoundly embarrassing in some ways to the Department of Justice for some of the things it would have revealed. In any case, it’s been cut off to him.

The second claim Bulger has made is that he was never an informant. His claim is that he paid for information, that he never gave anybody up. That too has been largely cut off as a defense for him, according to his attorneys. They’ll still try to push those points, but they’re much more restricted in what they can do now.

Let me ask you about the families of the alleged victims. Many of them are expected to be in the courtroom. And many others are expected to take the stand for the prosecution. What’s their role?

In the end, it really does come down to the families because their loss, their pain and how they have been treated is really the biggest indictment of all, of the government and how it handled “Whitey” Bulger, whether he was an informant or he wasn’t an informant. And their families were deprived of having a father, a husband, children. A lot of these families had no idea for years and years where their loved ones were. The remains of one victim are still unrecovered.

This is Paul McGonagle, formerly of South Boston. His father, also named Paul McGonagle, was murdered allegedly by Bulger in 1974. He was buried. His remains weren’t found until 26 years later. This is what McGonagle has to say:

Everywhere I went, I was always thinking that maybe I’ll run into those two. Maybe I’ll see Catherine Greig and Bulger walking on some beach, walking in some dog park. I was at an Irish festival in Atlantic City, N.J., and I saw this guy walking down the boardwalk. And he walked past me, and I caught up to him. I walked right in front of him and made him look me in the eye to be sure it wasn’t him.

We’re going to hear a lot more voices like this, aren’t we?

That’s right. Tuesday we’re going to talk to many more families of victims, and you will just understand — listening to these people — the depths of the pain that was caused by this relationship with the FBI.

• Complete Coverage: James “Whitey” Bulger