The Boston Globe interviewed MA governor-elect Deval Patrick in the Sunday, November 12, 2006 paper.
Boston Globe: How do you sustain the emotional energy of your supporters, which reached a peak with Tuesday's win?
Deval Patrick: First of all, it's not just emotional energy. There is a genuine network. There are people who want to remain civically engaged, and so I'm trying to think through what mechanisms there are for that. It may be the party, it may be the Deval Patrick Committee, it may be something else. It may be some combination of all those things. [Editorial Comment: The John Doe Club of Frank Capra's "Meet John Doe"? Is Upton Sinclair's 1932 CA Gubernatorial campaign's EPIC program worth a look?] But I do want to stay connected, and I want to keep it expanding, because as I said on Tuesday night, it's not just about Democrats; it's about citizenship, and everybody's got a place in that. [Editorial Comment: Deval Patrick and Barack Obama explicitly invite everybody to the table and that may very well also include Elijah.]
Boston Globe: But the bond you forged with all these people - didn't they sort of get what they wanted?
Deval Patrick: No, in some ways they did. But in many ways... I've been trying to explain to you guys what's happening for the longest time, and you get glimpses of it, but you miss it. And that's OK, because we didn't build it and people didn't join it for the media. [Editorial Comment: A real popular movement is one in which the politicians and the media are the last to know. Deval Patrick gets it. He organized a listening campaign, door to door as well as on the Internet, and he actually does listen. That's why he's now Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (God preserve her).] They joined it because there's a hunger out there for a sense of community, and you will find first of all that people will keep some of this together just because of this sense of community. [Editorial Comment: This is the key point. If you can satisfy the hunger for community with practical results you can create a virtuous cycle. Combine Gandhi's economics with solar and you have Solar Swadeshi.] They'll keep that going, you know, when it comes to library renovations or block parties or safe-streets initiatives and so forth. [Editorial Comment: I would suggest a Solar Is Civil Defense public education campaign myself.] That doesn't have to come from me. [Editorial Comment: Open source government?] What we have to do is, on occasion, remind people that it's important to stay together. The reason I push back a little when you say people got what they wanted, is that people understand they were checking in not just to win a campaign. It really is a cause. [Editorial Comment: The difference between politics and citizenship.] And if all we do is go up there and do the same old, same old, that will be the biggest disappointment for people.