One was both in Boston, the other was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. One went to Harvard and Harvard Law, the other never finished college. One has served as Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General of Massachusetts, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Secretary of Defense. Attorney General of the United States, Secretary of Commerce and Ambassador to Great Britain; the other has never held public office. One is the quintessential insider; the other the quintessential outsider.

The two men are Elliot L. Richardson '41 and Raymond Shamie, and they both want the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.

Though most of the attention in the Union's most liberal state has focused on the tight primary battle between Democrats Lt. Gov. John F. Kerry and U.S. Rep. James M. Shannon (D-Lawrence), the Republicans, with the not-insignificant help of President Reagan, may retake the seat held by Sen. Paul E. Tsongas (D-Mass.), who is retiring because of cancer.

But before the Republicans can turn their attention toward the Democrats, they must settle an internecine struggle for the soul of the state's beleaguered Republican party. By any estimation, the state's Republicans are in sorry shape; only 12.8 percent of the state's 3,053,143 voters are registered Republicans; only one of the state's 11 congressmen is Republican; and Republicans hold seven of 40 seats in the state Senate and 29 of 160 in the House.

Earlier this year the Republican state committee placed want ads in local newspapers to find men and women to run for the legislature.

The one bright spot is Ronald Reagan, who narrowly carried this liberal state in 1980 and is expected by many to do so again in November.

Consequently, both Richardson and Shamie have gone to great lengths to point up their similarities to the Great Communicator. The problem is that the two have widely divergent views on many foreign policy matters, and have strikingly different approaches to government and their prospective roles as senator.

Shamie says that like Reagan, he is philosophically oppposed to increasing taxes, even though the President last year signed into law a nearly $100 billion "revenue enhancement" bill and appears likely to support some tax increases in the future.

Richardson claims that top-level Administration officials personally asked him to run for Senate after Tsongas' withdrawal even as he criticizes Reagan nuclear policy and involvement in Central America. The Law of the Sea Treaty, described by one-time delegation head Richardson as his greatest achievement, was scuttled by the newly-elected Reagan, who said its terms were unfavorable to the U.S.

On paper, Richardson appears to be in better shape. Polls show him leading all candidates in the race, and his 35-year political career easily makes him the best known of the top four contenders. Like many Republican Senators and Congressmen in the Northeast, he is a moderate, favoring a reduction in nuclear armaments, opposing the B-1 bomber and MX missile, and supporting the Contadora call for negotiations in Central America.

In April, Richardson was quoted as saying he "might well have joined the rebellion against" the right-wing Salvadoran government before the rebels received Cuban and Soviet backing. Shamie called Richardson "naive" and said in a statement released by his office, "I would not have joined the Marxist rebels in Salvador, even if they had never been supplied by Cuba and Russia. They have killed innocent people, and terrorized thousands of ordinary El Salvadoreans for trying to vote."

Richardson's most idiosyncratic, some say weirdest, idea is a new Monroe Doctrine that would exclude both the U.S. and Soviet Union from any military involvement in Central America.

Though Richardson, in a recent interview, rejected the label "liberal Republican," he has made it clear that he feels the party must move leftward if it is to gain a Senate seat.

Richardson's friends say he is not proud of his most famous role as Attorney General in the "Saturday Night Massacre," when, during the Watergate scandal, he chose to resign rather than follow then-President Nixon's orders to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox '34. But campaign advertisements currently running on local TV stations hail his resignation--which made him a hero among liberals--as one of his greatest accomplishments.

"If anyone were looking at the question of what the positions of a Republican candidate would have to be to have a chance of winning, they would have to come up with a candidate pretty much like me," said Richardson.