The man Michael Dukakis left ``minding the store'' in Massachusetts while running for president is a veteran of 40 years in and around government. Hale Champion has been a reporter, a Harvard official, an aide to California Gov. Pat Brown and a health official in the Carter administration. Balding, rotund and 65, Champion gives the impression that he's seen it all and that nothing fazes him _ not complaining legislators or angry lobbyists, budget shortfalls or the way the news media covers it all. To read one Boston newspaper, Dukakis' chief secretary said in an interview last week, ``you would have thought blood was coursing through the corridors of the Statehouse, entrails draped over the balconies. ``Where? Who? I mean it's simply a bunch of people doing their work.'' Just doing your job. ``That's the way he looks at it,'' Champion said of his boss, the governor who has risen to become the Democratic presidential front-runner. ``Sometimes that's why people think he's not exciting enough, not emotional enough.'' But, said Champion, ``that's what I like about him. I mean that's what gets things done. That's what gets things taken care of, not emoting hour after hour. ``And if that says I am unemotional about those things, maybe I am.'' Champion's strength is that ``there isn't anything that he can think of that he hasn't seen before,'' said Dukakis' press secretary James Dorsey. ``He's sort of like a deeply set foundation'' for the administration. Champion himself was a press secretary, and then executive secretary and finance director for Brown, who was Ronald Reagan's predecessor as governor of California. His career also includes financial vice presidencies at the University of Minnesota and Harvard University; a stint as director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, when he first met Dukakis, and two years as undersecretary to Joseph Califano at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the Carter administration. He was in semi-retirement as executive dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government when Dukakis tapped him to become his chief secretary a year ago. ``I was never interested in working, you need to understand,'' he said with a smile. ``He resisted my arguments and persuaded my wife, and here I am.'' Considering Champion's background and symmetry of thinking with Dukakis, little had to be discussed between the two on what the job entailed. ``He and I both assumed that I knew what `minding the store' meant,'' Champion said. He has faced comparisons to John Sasso, the politically savvy, longtime Dukakis associate who had been chief secretary before moving over to run the campaign. Sasso later left over his part in the ``attack video'' episode that helped drive Sen. Joseph Biden from the presidential race. Some lawmakers have criticized the lack of courting they get from Champion. ``I don't do as much of it as John did ... never will, never did when I did this kind of job before (for Brown),'' Champion said. But he keeps in close contact with legislative leaders, and that to Champion is most important. While Champion frequently remarks on how there is nothing new under the sun in his job, there are some aspects that are different in keeping an administration going while the chief executive is running for president. First, he must make sure Dukakis is abreast of events back in the state while the governor spends three or more days a week on the campaign trail. Second, he has been chiefly in charge of bringing Dukakis' constitutional successor, Lt. Gov. Evelyn Murphy, more into the daily operations of the administration. And third, he has found that virtually every administration initiative _ from a universal health care bill to the state budget _ and many bills being pushed by individual lawmakers are publicly cast in the context of the impact on Dukakis' presidential campaign. ``At first I did get a little bit (upset),'' said Champion. ``It's ridiculous, but it's every single thing.'' But Champion said Dukakis and his administration have tried to solve any problems in that area by living the old saying, ``What's good politics is good government.'' ``If you look like you are doing what you ought to be doing generally, as against a gimme here and a gimme there, that's the best politics,'' Champion said. ``As a matter of fact, that's why Michael is where he is today, because he has always taken that kind of attitude.'' Champion said he isn't interested in a return trip to Washington if Dukakis is elected. Rather, he's counting down the last months he believes he will be in his present post and is looking beyond the part-time teaching position waiting for him at Harvard. What he's really looking forward to, he said, ``is that time when I am not even teaching.''
