Massachusetts gubernatorial race has historic overtones

EVERETT, Mass. — The weekend campaign rally in a middle-school gym echoed with familiar, feel-good themes of hope, inclusion and a call to "transform our political and civic life." The candidate quoted from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Jefferson and the Kennedys (Robert and John) — then trotted out a personal history of triumph over hardscrabble origins.

But the Democrat who widely is expected to claim the governor's office for his party for the first time in 20 years is anything but a standard-issue Massachusetts liberal.

Deval Patrick, 50, served as President Clinton's chief civil-rights lawyer and was general counsel to Texaco and Coca-Cola. Reared by a single mother on the south side of Chicago, he would follow fellow Democrat L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia as the second black governor since Reconstruction if he wins Tuesday.

As a first-time office seeker, Patrick spent the past two years building a broad network among the state's precincts. Polls late last week put him more than 25 percentage points ahead of his leading Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey.

A Patrick victory would secure Democratic control of Beacon Hill, where only 13 percent of the state's legislators are Republican or independent. The state's entire congressional delegation is Democratic.

A Patrick win also would reverberate beyond this intensely blue state.

For Republicans, the Massachusetts governorship was a plum, said Jennifer Duffy, editor of the independent Cook Political report in Washington. "It was the one place they always held up as an example, that they could win even in the bluest state," she said.

Duffy said Massachusetts is among the governors' seats that Republicans are expected to lose next week. "The Republican hold is just more precarious nationally," she said.

Patrick has benefited from a desire among many Massachusetts voters for change. The state has lost population in recent years, particularly among young, well-educated residents who say they cannot find jobs or affordable housing. State financing for higher education has plummeted, putting Massachusetts behind Alabama and Mississippi in funding of state colleges and universities.

"I feel desperate for change," said Raina Morgan, a hair-salon owner from nearby Revere, north of Boston. Morgan, 48, called Patrick "a breath of fresh air" and said she admired the way Patrick rose above attack ads from the Healey camp.

"He took the high ground, and he stuck with it, and he gets my respect for that," Morgan said.

Healey, 46, is married to a wealthy venture capitalist. She poured millions from her family's fortune into a television campaign that showed Patrick coming to the defense of a convicted rapist.

Healey, a criminologist, defended the ads, intended to portray Patrick as soft on crime, at a candidates' debate at Boston's Faneuil Hall. Addressing Patrick, she said: "It makes Massachusetts less safe when you advocate on behalf of a brutal rapist whom you have never even met."

In addition, Healey said: "I think Deval has the wrong priorities, working on behalf of a convicted rapist who brutally raped a grandmother."

Patrick did not deny that he helped seek parole for Benjamin LaGuer, convicted in 1984. At the rally in this working-class community near Boston, he said: "I have on occasion represented the unsavory defendant. And you better be glad somebody does, because that's what puts the justice in the justice system."

Patrick dismissed the Healey attack strategy as little more than a diversion. "To me," he said, "a lot of these ads are just about changing the subject."

Patrick came to Massachusetts more than 30 years ago when he won a scholarship to attend Milton Academy, an elite prep school. He flourished under Milton's rigorous academic regimen and in an environment that could not have been more different from his childhood in a Chicago housing project. When he called his grandmother to say he had been admitted to Harvard College, she asked, "Is that a good school?"

After Harvard Law School, Patrick settled in the town of Milton, south of Boston. He and his wife, Diane, also an attorney, have two daughters.

In an interview, Patrick said he did not think race had played a significant role in the campaign.

"This is America, so I know that it is on people's minds," he said. "If the only thing I were offering was to be the first black governor of Massachusetts, I would not win. But that is not all that I am offering."

Although Healey has raised red flags about a possible Democratic takeover on Beacon Hill, Patrick downplayed the dangers of one-party government in Massachusetts.

"It is not like there is lock-step behavior among Democrats," he said. "Besides, the voters are making a decision about leadership, not just party."