“Don’t you be Nader-ed again,” Clinton told an O’Brien rally in downtown New Bedford yesterday.

And in a Sunday night rally, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank ’61 joined with two of O’Brien’s opponents in this fall’s Democratic primary, Robert B. Reich and Warren Tolman, in urging progressives to vote O’Brien.

But the Stein campaign was unfazed.

“The only way they will develop an agenda that’s progressive is if we vote Green,” Stein told supporters in a rally held last night on Harvard’s campus. (Please see front page story.)

For a dozen years, liberal Massachusetts has elected a Republican governor—a trend that local political observer Robert Winters sees as an effort to balance the powers of the overwhelmingly democratic state legislature.

“The concept of having a fiscal conservative, i.e. a Republican, as governor, will appeal to people,” Winters said.

At stop after stop, both Romney and O’Brien invoked the debacles of Massachusetts governors from days gone by. At his campaign stops, Romney told crowds that during the term of Michael Dukakis—the state’s last Democratic governor—“the economy sank deeper into recession.”

Meanwhile, O’Brien released two ads playing on polling data that shows that voters think her running mate, Chris F. Gabrieli ’81, is better prepared to be governor than Kerry Healey ’82, Romney’s No. 2. Her ads point out that two recent Massachusetts governors have departed early from the Corner Office, leaving the state in their lieutenant governors’ hands.

“We’ve seen how important the lieutenant governor can be,” the ad says, alluding to the early departures of William F. Weld ’66 and A. Paul Cellucci.

Weekend polling also revealed that about ten percent of the state’s voters are still undecided, which makes winning over the vast population of unaffiliated voters even more important for the leading contenders.

While there are nearly three times as many registered Democratic voters as Republicans in the state, there are almost as many unenrolled voters (registered voters not affiliated with a political party) as Republicans and Democrats put together.

All of the local competitive races in Cambridge were settled in September—on the day of the Democratic primaries.

Only one Cambridge state representative, Timothy J. Toomey of East Cambridge, faces a challenge. For the first time in eight years, Toomey will not be on the ballot alone, although local political observer Robert Winters says the challenge from Green Party candidate Paul Lachelier amounts to running unopposed.

—Staff writer Lauren R. Dorgan can be reached at dorgan@fas.harvard.edu.