Governor Deval Patrick

Howard Manly

In one of the most lopsided gubernatorial elections in recent history, Deval Patrick easily defeated Lt. Governor Kerry Healey, ending a 16-year Republican reign on the state’s corner office and sending a message across the nation that the politics of fear and negativity don’t work in Massachusetts.

His landslide victory makes him only the second African American to become governor in the United States and the second African American to win state-wide office in Massachusetts. The first was Edward Brooke, the Roxbury Republican who became state attorney general in 1964 and U.S. senator in 1966. The first African American governor was L. Douglas Wilder, who served one term in Virginia.

By besting Healey by nearly 20 percentage points, Patrick, 50, overcame a vicious and personal political campaign against him, one that saw his sister’s marital problems in the local tabloid newspaper and Healey campaign volunteers dressed in orange prison garb demonstrating in front of his home.

In stark contrast, Patrick remained classy and above the fray, riding his grassroots message of hope and civic involvement to sweep virtually every city and town in the commonwealth. From the very outset, Patrick vowed to end the real opponent in this season’s race — cynicism.

“People really got engaged and did what Deval asked them to do and that was to care enough about their state to participate,” said Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral. “In return, Patrick promised them that their vote would be meaningful and they trusted him.”

As much as any specific policy, this election turned on the issue of character, integrity and a widespread belief that Patrick could and would do better. It also turned on what Cabral characterized as a rejection of the politics of fear. “People are exhausted of being told that they need to be afraid of everything and particularly each other. I know I for one am looking forward to real leadership out of the governor’s office.”

Patrick was able to pounce on the widespread dissatisfaction with both Gov. Mitt Romney and his attempt to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and the Bush administration’s war against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. Patrick also benefited from Healey’s negative political attacks, considered to be the worst in the nation.

Healey tried to paint Patrick as a tax-and-spend liberal that was out-of-touch with Massachusetts’ voters who she claimed needed republicans to balance the Democratically-held state Legislature. But those strategies backfired, causing Healey to come across as a desperate symbol of the Republican Party and, as it turned out, an embarrassment.

“I think it’s time we get someone new in the corner office,” said home health aide Vivian Ramos, 57, of New Bedford. “We need Deval Patrick. All the younger people leave the city, get educated and find work elsewhere.”

Her 26-year-old daughter worked with computers, but moved to South Carolina in April. “My daughter went to South Carolina because there was nothing for her to do here. Every job she had, they laid her off,” said Ramos. “There’s no work here.”

Polling places across the state reported remarkable turnouts. In Patrick’s hometown precinct in Milton, 88 percent of the registered voters turned out. In Boston, Patrick was carrying a more than three-to-one margin over Healey, and he reportedly won in predominantly white neighborhoods such as South Boston and West Roxbury.

“I can tell you already, at 7:55 in the morning, that it’s a much better turnout here this year than last [election],” said Judi, a poll worker at Jackson/Mann Elementary School in Allston who declined to give her last name. “And I think it’s going to be a much better turnout overall, too.”

One of those voters, Sara Stolfi, cast her ballot for Patrick, the former White House civil rights attorney and corporate executive.

“I voted for [Deval] Patrick because I believe he stands for a lot of the same things I do, politically and policy-wise,” said Stolfi, 24. “And honestly, because he seems like he could be a change of pace.”

Another voter had different reasons for not only voting for Patrick but also volunteering for him during the campaign. Emma Willmann, a student at Simmons College, said that she believes that Patrick bridges the public and private sector through his work with former president Bill Clinton and corporate America.

“I think it’s important,” she said, “especially for Democrats, to be seen as corporate-friendly. He’s not really about party politics; it’s more right and wrong, rather than left and right. I also like Deval’s emphasis on growing our economy and creating jobs on all economic levels.”

His story is all too well known. Patrick grew up on the South Side of Chicago, near the infamous Robert Taylor housing projects. His father was gone, and his mother worked at the post office. He made his way past the gangs and violence and learned about the A Better Chance program, which provided scholarships to prestigious prep schools for disadvantaged students. In 1970, Patrick attended Milton Academy, then Harvard and on to Harvard Law School.

After working for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Patrick joined a powerful law firm in Boston. President Bill Clinton then tapped Patrick to become assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Patrick later landed jobs at Texaco and Coca-Cola and served on the boards of several other large corporations.

Patrick’s grassroots message and campaign of hope had resonated with voters from the very start. Starting with the Democratic caucuses in February, when Patrick beat rival Attorney General Thomas Reilly by a nearly two-to-one margin — and in Middlesex County by a nine-to-one margin — Patrick has never trailed.

During the June 3 Democratic Party Convention in Worcester, Patrick earned 58 percent of the vote, while Reilly earned 27 percent and Chris Gabrieli barely made the cut with a little more than 15 percent. The clincher came on Sept. 19, when Patrick rolled to victory with 50 percent of the Democratic primary voters.

The Republican nominee had little choice but to go negative. But she failed at every turn. Issues such as rolling back state income taxes and prohibiting illegal immigrants from receiving in-state tuition or drivers’ licenses failed to gain any real traction. Even her characterization of Patrick being soft-on-crime backfired, particularly after she sought to wrest control of issuing gun permits from local police chiefs to a state-appointed commission.

“Law enforcement professionals at the local level are the best protection against a gun being placed in the hands of an inappropriate person,” said Chief Wayne Sampson, commander of the Shrewsbury Police Department, at a news conference. “We know our communities and the people who reside there best, and we are adamantly against the state taking over this essential public safety function.”

As a result of Healey’s campaign promise to create yet another state bureaucracy, the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association met and voted to endorse Patrick for governor, marking only the third time in the last 30 years that it has endorsed a candidate.

“These local chiefs know who the responsible gun owners are in their cities and towns, and they know the bad characters who shouldn’t get a gun permit,” Patrick said at the time. “Local control of gun permits isn’t broken and a Beacon Hill bureaucracy certainly won’t fix it.”

The police association wasn’t the only group to make a rare political endorsement for Patrick. Responding to Healey’s criticism that Patrick was wrong to defend some of his clients, lawyers from across the state were outraged.

In an editorial published last month, the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly endorsed Patrick for governor, the first time the trade paper has officially supported a candidate for elected office in its 34-year history.

By all accounts, the race was over pretty early. In a live interview from the Patrick camp with Jay Severin and Michael Graham on 96.9-FM, radio and television host Jim Braude called Patrick’s campaign control center “the most confident election night headquarters I’ve ever seen in my X years in politics. … They knew all along.”

Braude reported that early exit polling suggested that the 20-22 point margin by which most public opinion polls showed Patrick leading Healey “might be a low number — this could be a two-to-one type of scenario.”