Saint Patrick and His Devils
Upstart candidate Deval Patrick has been hailed as a savior by liberal Democrats eager to see one of their own in the governor’s office. But to win in November, he’ll have to overcome his reputation among conservatives as the “quota king
MASSACHUSETTS MAY BE THE BIRTHPLACE of the American racial justice movement, but that was a long time ago. These days, we’re better known as a place where minority political power is conspicuously scarce, and upwardly mobile blacks are far more likely to flee to more hospitable states than stay and run for high elective office.
But less than nine months from now, the unthinkable might happen. A poor kid from the Midwest, who came here under unlikely circumstances 35 years ago and went on to become one of the nation’s leading civil rights crusaders, could become this state’s first black governor. And if he should pull off that improbable feat, watch for a turn in the long-retreating tide of black professionals like Anna Waring, a Roxbury native who runs a private girls’ Catholic school in Chicago.
If Deval Patrick is elected, Waring says, “I might have to move back.”
Waring has been a huge Patrick fan since they were freshmen together at Milton Academy in 1970. But Patrick, who has unexpectedly become the hottest ticket in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, has picked up plenty of new believers. Local liberals have been waiting for someone like him for some time, their hope dwindling with each inept insider failure coughed up by the calcified Democratic Party. “You tell someone a candidate came up through the ranks, was a rep, then a senator, and their eyes just glaze over,” moans longtime party activist Barbara Miranda.
So for Miranda and the other suburban liberals packed into a recent meeting of the Belmont Democratic Town Committee, the Patrick candidacy is a latter-day miracle. These folks would have laughed you out of Starbucks if you had told them two years ago that a handsome Harvard grad—a ghetto kid made good with impeccable progressive credentials as a defense lawyer, a top Clinton administration drum major for justice—would come out of nowhere to lead them to the promised land.
Skepticism and despair give way to exultant applause as Patrick walks into a sweaty second-floor meeting room in Belmont Town Hall. Like Tom Cruise courting the love-struck Renée Zellweger in Jerry Maguire, Patrick has this crowd at “Hello.” And these are precisely the sort of earnest, affluent activists whose money and labor Patrick needs to compete with the plump war chest and institutional support stockpiled by Attorney General Tom Reilly, let alone the even fatter Kerry Healey bankroll that will confront the Democratic nominee this fall.
With his flawless diction, restrained tone, and flat Midwestern accent, Patrick is a soothing study in sincerity. He does not play pretend by mimicking the evangelical passion of the pulpit or the rostrum-pounding rhetorical heat of the pol on the make. He’s a calm, Ivy League lawyer, artfully leading the jury to its inevitable endorsement of his argument. His left hand stays in his jacket pocket, leaving the right to provide occasional, understated punctuation. His facial expression is unblinking and intense, but not in an off-putting way. The image projected is of intelligence, poise, and, above all, thoughtfulness, a trait emphasized by his habit of cocking his head to one side and looking off to a brighter horizon as he reaches for a particularly profound expression: “I am so in my soul convinced the same old thing isn’t gonna work.”
But less than nine months from now, the unthinkable might happen. A poor kid from the Midwest, who came here under unlikely circumstances 35 years ago and went on to become one of the nation’s leading civil rights crusaders, could become this state’s first black governor. And if he should pull off that improbable feat, watch for a turn in the long-retreating tide of black professionals like Anna Waring, a Roxbury native who runs a private girls’ Catholic school in Chicago.
If Deval Patrick is elected, Waring says, “I might have to move back.”
Waring has been a huge Patrick fan since they were freshmen together at Milton Academy in 1970. But Patrick, who has unexpectedly become the hottest ticket in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, has picked up plenty of new believers. Local liberals have been waiting for someone like him for some time, their hope dwindling with each inept insider failure coughed up by the calcified Democratic Party. “You tell someone a candidate came up through the ranks, was a rep, then a senator, and their eyes just glaze over,” moans longtime party activist Barbara Miranda.
So for Miranda and the other suburban liberals packed into a recent meeting of the Belmont Democratic Town Committee, the Patrick candidacy is a latter-day miracle. These folks would have laughed you out of Starbucks if you had told them two years ago that a handsome Harvard grad—a ghetto kid made good with impeccable progressive credentials as a defense lawyer, a top Clinton administration drum major for justice—would come out of nowhere to lead them to the promised land.
Skepticism and despair give way to exultant applause as Patrick walks into a sweaty second-floor meeting room in Belmont Town Hall. Like Tom Cruise courting the love-struck Renée Zellweger in Jerry Maguire, Patrick has this crowd at “Hello.” And these are precisely the sort of earnest, affluent activists whose money and labor Patrick needs to compete with the plump war chest and institutional support stockpiled by Attorney General Tom Reilly, let alone the even fatter Kerry Healey bankroll that will confront the Democratic nominee this fall.
With his flawless diction, restrained tone, and flat Midwestern accent, Patrick is a soothing study in sincerity. He does not play pretend by mimicking the evangelical passion of the pulpit or the rostrum-pounding rhetorical heat of the pol on the make. He’s a calm, Ivy League lawyer, artfully leading the jury to its inevitable endorsement of his argument. His left hand stays in his jacket pocket, leaving the right to provide occasional, understated punctuation. His facial expression is unblinking and intense, but not in an off-putting way. The image projected is of intelligence, poise, and, above all, thoughtfulness, a trait emphasized by his habit of cocking his head to one side and looking off to a brighter horizon as he reaches for a particularly profound expression: “I am so in my soul convinced the same old thing isn’t gonna work.”
