Mr. Patrick Urges Voters to Shape Political Dialogue

By MAX HART

Deval L. Patrick can understand the disillusionment.

The man who would be governor of Massachusetts understands the
growing skepticism about politics and politicians throughout the state
and the country. He understands the anger people feel when confronted
with inefficiencies in government and the apathy of those who should be
accountable - things that he says are corroding the fabric of
communities everywhere. He understands the anxiety about holding onto
jobs, paying for a child's education or obtaining sufficient
health care.

Most of all, though, he understands the frustration that has
overcome the voting public, leading to their tuning out of a critical
dialogue on the direction of this state and country.

He understands these views, he just does not subscribe to them.

"That's the vision of government that was on display in
the Gulf Coast after Katrina, and a lot of us looked at those images and
we were ashamed of what we saw and we were right to be ashamed,"
Mr. Patrick said during a visit to the Vineyard this weekend. "But
all those folks who were abandoned on the rooftops after Katrina were
abandoned before that storm, and frankly all of us who care about their
experience and what it says about the wholeness of our community today
- I believe we have been waiting for the Democratic party to make
up its mind about what it is we stand for.

"So I say let's stand for something this time, and not
that old background noise about government trying to solve every problem
in everybody's life - nobody buys that or ever has, as far as
I'm concerned," he continued. "But the simple and I
think decent premise that government has a role to play in helping us
help ourselves, so that when people say government is bad, I want us to
start saying ‘wait a minute, government is us - it's
you and me,' and so we ought to insist every time that it be smart
and effective and efficient and pragmatic and compassionate, because
that is the best of who we are and the best of what we have."

Reuniting communities around the state and bringing a new voice to
the Democratic party constitute a heavy workload for just about any
politician seeking office, let alone one who is a relative newcomer to
the political arena. But those are just a few of the goals set out by
Mr. Patrick as he vies for the Democratic nomination for governor of
Massachusetts.

Mr. Patrick visited the Island this weekend for a community forum,
followed by a fundraiser at the Vineyard home of prominent Harvard Law
School professor Henry Louis (Skip) Gates Jr.

On Saturday, an affable, relaxed and charismatic Mr. Patrick spoke
to a large crowd that filled the Performing Arts Center at the
Martha's Vineyard Regional High School. Employing a town meeting
format, Mr. Patrick's talk focused on issues facing the
commonwealth, touching on everything from the Big Dig to Cape Wind to
having Beacon Hill serve the entire state - not, as he says, just
Beacon Hill. He then answered more than a dozen questions from the
audience.

"Politics. What a total turnoff it is for a lot of good
people, I know that," he said. "Maybe some of you, maybe
some of your friends and your neighbors, when they think of politics
they think of two heads on TV or two voices on the radio screaming at
each other from the polar extremes of any idea, and gotcha games, and
all the tactics of winning an election as if principle and vision is for
the naive and unsophisticated. And this causes a lot of good people to
check out and to give up.

"I used to turn to my wife after a disappointing election
outcome and I'd say who votes for these people? How did we get
this?" he continued to laughter. "But I don't do that
anymore, and I haven't for some while, because I think we get the
leadership we deserve."

In particular, Mr. Patrick was critical of governor Mitt Romney,
describing him as a recreational governor.

"He is more interested in having the job than doing the job,
and the job needs to be done," Mr. Patrick said.

Mr. Patrick, who recently turned 50, discussed his lower-class
upbringing on Chicago's South Side, his rise through Milton
Academy on a scholarship and his graduation from Harvard University and
Harvard Law School. He also talked about his professional career, first
serving as assistant attorney general for civil rights under President
Bill Clinton and later as legal counsel and corporate executive for
Coca-Cola, Texaco and Ameriquest. His affiliation with each company has
drawn attacks from political rivals and critics who say he compromised
his ethics by working for the companies, which have been under attack
for, among other things, their treatment of minorities.

But Mr. Patrick's supporters are quick to defend their
candidate as a straight-talking, honest and refreshing blast of
integrity, something disgruntled voters are searching for: a
non-politician politician. That grass-roots appeal, Mr. Patrick credits,
comes from a career balanced between the public and private sectors.

"I have had leadership experience at the highest level of
government - in the Clinton administration - but also in
business and not for profits in community work, and I understand the
language and the decision making in each of those sectors and nobody
else in the race - Democrat, Republican or Independent - has
that range of leadership experience," he said in a brief
conversation with the Gazette after his talk.

"But I also fundamentally believe it is important to reengage
citizens in their political and civic lives. That is why we run a
grass-roots campaign. I don't think it's enough to go to
people in the last few weeks of the campaign with 30-second ads."

Mr. Patrick was also quick to admit something very
un-politician-like - that he does not have all the answers. Among
the areas he says he is still learning about are fisheries policy and
local agriculture, and he was frank about his need and desire to learn
more.

"I'm just beginning to spend time with commercial
fishermen in particular to learn about some of their issues in terms of
management, so I've got some more homework to do in that
area," he said when asked what he would do to help the
state's struggling fishing industry.

On the controversial proposal by Cape Wind Associates to build 130
large wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, Mr. Patrick defended his support
for the project, saying the state should not discourage innovative ideas
for renewable energy.

"You've got a private developer who took the initiative
that is not at all unlike what we reward in all kinds of aspects of
American life," Mr. Patrick said. "I think it is right that
he is paying and will pay a licence fee and that Massachusetts will get
a portion of that, and I think it is right that there has been the level
of regulatory scrutiny that the project has gotten. I think the point
about the importance of having a regulatory framework for projects like
this is very well taken - I get that. I think in point of fact we
have built that regulatory framework in the course of review of this
project," he said, continuing:

"But as I have said, I don't want to be in a position of
faulting initiative. You rarely meet someone who says they aren't
in favor of alternative or renewable energy, and while I don't
think any project is perfect, this one is pretty good - on
balance."

Still, he knows this issue in particular is a hot-button one with
voters on the Cape and Islands, and said he hoped his position would
lead to constructive conversations about the project - an open
line of communication which he said is a defining characteristic of his
campaign.

"We started about a year and a half ago, with smaller groups
then, warm receptions and deeply skeptical people, deeply skeptical
people who said you know, nice guy with interesting ideas but he
can't win," he said. "But we went to work at the grass
roots level and all over the commonwealth, and here I am.

"But I don't see it as much as my campaign but rather
our cause," he continued. "If what I have talked about is
the kind of community that you are interested in rebuilding across the
commonwealth, and the kind of government you want to reflect your best
values, that is the kind of government I am ready to lead."