Excerpts from Patrick’s victory speech

Today, November 7, 2006, the people of Massachusetts chose by a decisive margin to take back their government.

This was not a victory just for me. This was not a victory just for Democrats. This was a victory for hope.

And we won it the old-fashioned way — we earned it. Nearly two years ago, we started on this journey. By coming to you, where you live and work, by listening to you, by showing that we could disagree with each other without being disagreeable, by asking you to put your cynicism down, by refusing to build myself up by tearing anybody else down, by challenging you to see your stake in your neighbor’s dreams and struggles as well as your own, we built what history will record is the broadest and best-organized grassroots organization this Commonwealth has ever seen.

Look around, especially those of you who have never done this. Every kind of person is here. You come from every corner of the Commonwealth. You come from great wealth and no wealth. You walk and you use wheelchairs. You are Democrats and Independents and Republicans. You are liberal and moderate and conservative.

You see in common how broken our civic life and how fractured our communities have become. You see in common that the poor are in terrible shape and the middle class are one month away from being poor. You know that government by gimmick and sound bite isn’t working. You know we deserve better and we are better than that. And for a chance at a better and more hopeful future, you built bridges some of you never thought you could, across all kinds of differences — and then you crossed them.

You are business executives looking for a better margin and artists looking to be valued. You are college kids in search of a career and high school drop-outs looking for a way forward. You are young mothers trying to balance work and child care and grandmothers trying to hold on to the family home. You are farmers and fishing families wondering whether there is a future in livelihoods that built this Commonwealth and union members wondering why there is so little work when there is so much to do. And the magic is that you have come together not just for your own hopes and aspirations, but for each others’.

This has never been my campaign. It has always been yours. The real heroes here are the thousands of you, here and at home, many who have never been involved before in a political campaign, who set aside what you were doing to get involved, who confronted your despair about the direction our Commonwealth was heading in, and decided to take responsibility for her future.

You transformed this from a political campaign to a movement for change. I am honored and awed by what you have done. You made a claim on history, and I thank you for letting me be a part of that.

Unfortunately, there is unpleasantness in any political campaign. This one had perhaps more than its share. But let’s put that behind us. That is yesterday. I am not here to serve as governor of the winners. I am here to serve as governor of the whole Commonwealth. So, just as you have built bridges across differences to create this grassroots movement, go build bridges with supporters of the competing campaigns. They are our neighbors, too. They are a part of our community, too. They have a stake in a fair and purposeful government, just like the rest of us.

What you should expect is that I will work as hard and as smart as I can; that I will listen closely and carefully; that I will be straight with you, as I expect you to be with me; that I will make mistakes, as humans sometimes do, and that I will learn from them when I do; that I will bring every day the best that I have and the best that I am.