Massachusetts Senate Debate Tonight: Coakley Vs. The Other Dems

The first debate in the Democratic race to succeed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) takes place tonight at 7 pm ET. The one-hour event will be held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, and it will be televised on WCVB, WBZ, WHDH, NECN and WGBH.

Better yet, it will be streamed live on the Web site of member station WBUR. Here's the link.

Four candidates are in the running for the Democratic nomination, which will be decided in the Dec. 8 primary: state Attorney General Martha Coakley, U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano, City Year co-founder Alan Khazei, and Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca. For the Boston Globe's Matt Viser, it's more like Coakley vs. the rest of them:

Every week, it seems that Attorney General Martha Coakley looks for ways to tell voters she has the US Senate race in the bag.

First, she announced she had raised an impressive $2.2 million in the opening weeks of the campaign. The week after, she trumpeted internal polling numbers that indicated she was light-years ahead. Then it was a slew of endorsements from state lawmakers, women leaders, and Massachusetts unions.

"Isn't that how you win any race?'' Coakley said in an interview. "Getting ahead and staying there?''

Nearly halfway through the contest to succeed Edward M. Kennedy, Coakley is running a classic front-runner's campaign: guarding her image closely, limiting opportunities for missteps, and broadcasting strength in any way she can.

Tonight's debate is seen as Coakley's first "major test," a "potential game-changing event" in the battle for the Dem nomination. Suffolk University professor John Berg calls it "Coakley's to lose."

And that is understandable. As the only woman, the first candidate to enter, and the only one to have run statewide, she has built-in advantages.

As for the other candidates, Pagliuca, a multi-millionaire, is up with a blitz of TV ads, arguing that he "can best bring jobs to Massachusetts." Khazei is employing classic grass-roots tactics, using "an army of citizen supporters." (This is the first campaign for both Pagliuca and Khazei.) As for Capuano, he is seen as "her top challenger":

Capuano continues to peg himself as an "underdog,'' but he argues that Coakley is no longer presumed to be the automatic winner. ...

"I'm sensing exactly what I wanted to sense, which is the coronation was stopped,'' he said in an interview. "It's pretty much a two-way race now. People are slowly, slowly starting to make their judgments.''

The clear Republican frontrunner for the seat is state Sen. Scott Brown. Jack E. Robinson, who got clobbered by Kennedy as the GOP Senate nominee back in 2000, has filed signatures to get on the Dec. 8 primary ballot. Robinson has been called a "scandal magnet" by the Boston Herald's Hillary Chabot for a series of controversies, including his failure to pay $70,000 in taxes. He also claimed to be related to the great baseball player Jackie Robinson, "but the player's widow had never heard of him."

The special general election is Jan. 19. Paul Kirk (D), appointed to the Senate last month by Gov. Deval Patrick, will serve until then.