In the plush ballroom of Boston's Park Plaza Hotel and amid calls for "four more years," Acting Governor A. Paul Cellucci's campaign celebrated his gubernatorial victory last night as red, white and blue balloons cascaded down.

In a win that Cellucci proclaimed a watershed victory, Massachusetts voters, many of whom remained undecided until election day, chose to vote with their pocketbooks and play it safe.

While L. Scott Harshbarger '64, a

former Harvard running back, promised that he was going to pull off an upset victory similar to his successful 1990 bid for attorney general, it was Cellucci, a Boston College alum, who squeaked out a two percent win.

"We knew it was going to be a fight, but this [was] a dogfight," said Antrobus, Cellucci's press secretary.

Although the race remained acrimonious throughout, with a slew of negative advertisements and debates that degenerated into shouting matches, the candidates' platforms were remarkably similar.

In Cellucci's victory speech, he emphasized economic strength and also stressed education and health care issues.

"No matter where you live or what your philosophical beliefs, we all probably want the same thing: A good life for your children and the community where you live," Cellucci said in his victory speech last night.

Harshbarger also focused on education, but in the end, while voters obviously cared about education, they felt safe enough with Cellucci to maintain the status quo.

The only major difference between the two candidates is that Cellucci said he supports the death penalty while Harshbarger opposes it.

The Bay State's political past at times threatened to engulf both candidates, with Cellucci branding Harshbarger a Dukakis-style tax and spend liberal and Harshbarger accusing Cellucci of riding the coattails of former governor William F. Weld '66.

Jane Swift, Cellucci's running mate as the democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, also harking back to the theme of the Dukakis years.

"During the last eight years, life has gotten better," she said at last night's celebration.

"Today our taxes are low, unemployment has decreased and businesses are prospering," she said.

Despite Harshbarger's pledge to keep the state's budget balanced, his failure to take a no-new taxes pledge was a political gold mine for Cellucci.

It gave credence to Massachusetts voters' fear that Harshbarger is a tax-and-spend liberal in moderate clothing.

These fears of returning to a Dukakis-like era of large state debt and fiscal irresponsibility, coupled with troubling indications of an economic stumble, forced voters to think twice about bucking the status quo.

While Harshbarger's Democratic predecessor was a burden to the attorney general, Cellucci was heir to a more desirable political heritage.

Many Bay State residents attribute the state's economic turn-around in the 1990s to Weld, whom Cellucci worked with as lieutenant governor for two terms.

"When [Weld and Cellucci] took over in 1991, Massachusetts was one of the worst states in the nation," said Bob Scott, a long-time Cellucci supporter.

"Education in my town has become so much better," said Jessica A. Burdick, a North Adams fourth-grade teacher. "In the Dukakis years, I had 29 kids in my class; now I have 19."

Pundits say that all this mud slinging may have contributed to yesterday's low voter turnout by promoting a disappointing image of both candidates.

While election turnout was expected to be low without a Senate or presidential race, it nearly broke records.

"The voters are sending a message to some degree, but voter turnout wasn't as low as expected," Bus said.

And it seemed that was just enough to remove the "Acting" from Cellucci's title, giving him the opportunity to step out of Weld's shadow and take Massachusetts into the next century