Two new polls were released in Massachusetts today and
Deval Patrick is up big! For those of you who don't know much about the race, there were three Democratic candidates running for Governor.
Tom Reilly is the Attorney General and consummate politician. He had inside support from the beginning, but has really fudged his campaign and his message doesn't work.
Chris Gabrieli is a venture capitalist who has spent 8 million dollars on the primary alone. He's positioned himself as the moderate, DLC-style candidate in this race - but notably has social progressive issues like equality in marriage. He's not a bad candidate, but is a two-time loser and basically got in the race because Tom Reilly went back on his word in making Gabrieli the running mate.
More below the fold.
Deval Patrick is the progressive candidate. He went town to town to get support back when he had a name recognition below 5%. He has an inspiring story - going from needing Public Assistance in the South Side of Chicago to becoming a Harvard Grad and working as the Chief of Civil Rights at Clinton's Justice Department. Patrick also went on to work with several corporate boards, but has a
good corporate record that no one has been able to sleazily exploit (despite
massive efforts).
Daily Kos has taken a keen interest in Deval Patrick's campaign and for good reason. Deval Patrick offers a message of hope, has great credentials and has a remarkable quality that few have seen since the days of JFK. So to see Deval up is a very big deal. So much of Deval's campaign has been about beating back the politics of cynicism. Deval's backers are used to losing time and time again, be it with John Kerry of Robert Reich. Deval offerred something different: he's a candidate that listens. He knows the consultant class was wrong. He knows that key to gaining victory is getting the voters who have "checked out" back on our side.
So how has this happened? There are a number of reasons, but two main points. First, Deval did well at the last debate, which was the biggest debate thus far. Furthermore, the press coverage of that debate certainly didn't hurt Deval. Secondly, Deval scored the endorsement of the Boston Globe, which was both unexpected for an establishment paper that has seemed unfairly critical of Patrick in the past. More importantly, the editorial was exceptionally well-reasoned and positive - emphasizing critical parts of the campaign such as the fact that Deval's methodology is right. It isn't enough to be liberal, the state of our democracy transcends political preferences. The Globe got that and seeing as how Deval has raised record amounts of grassroots money and has over 7,000 active volunteers, that clearly means something - especially when the opponents were big spenders, either in the form of spending over 8 million dollars in the campaign or having sat on a 4+ million dollar war-chest in part funded through people closely connected to the Big Dig.
I'm not going to crack open the bubbly yet. Chris Gabrieli can still legally spend approximately a million dollars a day. He's spent about 8 million thus far, there's no reason to suspect he'll want to refocus the campaign on a battle of ideas instead of money now. However, for the first time in a very long time I have confidence in the Progressive movement's road to victory. With Deval Patrick, it's going to start in Massachusetts.