Massachusetts’ Message May Worry Other Incumbents : Politics: Analysts say Tuesday’s vote axing anyone with Statehouse ties may be a special situation. Or anti-status quo anger is spreading.

BOSTON —  In the tradition of the colony that started the American Revolution, primary election voters in Massachusetts have sent out a message: the political status quo, at least here, is no more.

Turning out in near-record numbers, voters on Tuesday effectively axed almost anyone associated with the established order. The two nominees who now will contest for the governor’s office in November--Democrat John R. Silber and Republican William F. Weld--handily defeated the primary candidates endorsed by their own parties.

Silber, the acerbic president of Boston University, defeated former state Atty. Gen. Francis X. Bellotti 54% to 44%. Weld defeated state House Minority Leader Steven Pierce 60% to 40%.

The primary also saw the defeat of the state House Speaker in the Democratic primary for treasurer, and of incumbent Atty. Gen. James Shannon, the first primary defeat of an incumbent attorney general in memory.

The strength of the anti-Establishment furor was unexpected and prompted some reassessment of how such sentiment might affect races elsewhere.

“If this is indicative to any degree of the mood around the country,” incumbents could be in trouble, said political analyst William Schneider, a fellow at Washington’s American Enterprise Institute who is teaching this semester at Boston College.

In some ways Massachusetts is unique because outgoing Gov. Michael S. Dukakis is so unpopular and the economic scene is so bleak. Unemployment has doubled in one year, and recent tax hikes have proven inadequate to meet a growing budget deficit. “Voters here were angry,” Schneider said.

But internal polling by both parties around the country earlier this summer showed growing disaffection with the parties themselves and with incumbents generally. And now the national economy is also in trouble. “Bad economic times play themselves out at the polls,” said Marty Linsky, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Political analysts in both parties anticipated that the Persian Gulf crisis would probably help incumbents by making voters less anxious for change. And outside of Massachusetts, few established political figures running for reelection appear to be in serious trouble in public opinion surveys. But the Massachusetts results are likely to keep politicians on edge no matter what their polls tell them now.

In addition, another vote in Oklahoma on Tuesday was a clear indication of voter anger at politics-as-usual. Voters there passed by 2 to 1 a measure limiting the terms of state officeholders. A similar measure is on the California November ballot, and plans are being laid to get term limits on ballots in 15 more states by 1992.

In Massachusetts, Silber was all but written off just a week ago when, in one of his brash remarks that have come to be known as “Silber shockers,” he said he wasn’t campaigning in Roxbury, one of Boston’s predominantly black areas, because he didn’t see the point of lecturing to drug dealers.

But Silber ended up being seen as “a guy who doesn’t kowtow,” Lipsky said. The 64-year-old Silber, a native Texan, was helped by an “overwhelming” vote from independent voters, political pollster Gerry Chervinsky said. He added that Bellotti, Silber’s opponent, was perceived as a symbol of the Democratic Establishment.

Silber also drew strength from a kind of hidden vote, Lou DiNatale, a political analyst, said. “There’s no question that Silber was the kind of guy that people did not want to embrace publicly, but privately wanted to vote for to send a message,” he said.

On Wednesday, Silber told a Democratic breakfast that “We do not come before voters as the old Democratic Party. We have been through a watershed experience.”

On the Republican side, Weld, 40, the former U.S. attorney and assistant attorney general, was trailing badly in the polls as recently as Labor Day. But Pierce, a 12-year member of the state Legislature, apparently was tainted by his association with the Statehouse.