# Politically damaged governor limps into SouthCoast



## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

How can it be that Deval Patrick was so good at running his gubernatorial campaign but is so bad at running the state?
Almost since Day 1, Patrick has stepped into one avoidable political mine field after another.
And now he's reached the point where at least one poll is actually showing Treasurer Tim Cahill would defeat him in a Democratic primary, and also that Cahill has more money in his campaign fund: $502,000 to $429,000.
The governor is coming to Westport Thursday to address the Fall River and New Bedford chambers of commerce, so maybe he'll enlighten us as to why his first 2½ years in office have been so difficult. No one else, it seems, has been able to put forth a theory as to why he's been so peripatetic, why he's been so politically tone deaf.
Gov. Patrick has been relatively good to SouthCoast.
Although he hasn't come up with a guarantee for commuter rail, he's made greater progress toward it - purchasing the CSX tracks and putting together a professional planning process - than any recent governor. Still, if he can't get re-elected, all bets will be off for the train, since the governor's timetable doesn't bring it to New Bedford until 2016, two years after his second term - if he somehow still gets it - will be over.
On the state level, however, Deval Patrick seems to have been one disaster after another.
He started off with his ham-handed replacement of a Ford as the governor's official vehicle with a Cadillac. From there, he was outfoxed on his laudable bid to bring the state casino revenue by a more politically savvy House speaker.
Then, just as the govenor was about to embark on a badly needed reform of the state's transportation bureaucracy, he unbelievably appointed James Aloisi, a lawyer who was intimately involved with the cost overruns at the Big Dig, to head up the agency.
In one simple stroke, he jettisoned his image as an outside reformer who was willing to take on the state's entrenched Democratic political establishment.
It almost seems Patrick is so convinced of his own political genius that he actually thought he didn't have to obey the same rules he held others to.
After Patrick wounded himself on the Aloisi appointment, he proceeded to cut off his other arm - this time with the best of intentions, but again with a case of the same tone deafness he seemed immune to during the campaign. With the public still reeling from the memory of $4-a-gallon gasoline, he proposed the highest gas tax in the nation.
Now, I agreed with the governor on the gas tax increase. Not only does it discourage reliance on fossil fuel from the Middle East, it spreads the burden of paying for the state's transportation infrastructure among those who use it most heavily.
But the public was in no mood for a gas hike and the governor's poll numbers plummeted.
But nothing that Patrick had done during his first two years did more to damage his reputation - and this time, gravely - than appointing Marian Walsh (one of his first political supporters) to a $175,000-a-year political job that hadn't been filled in 12 years.
It cemented his image as a phony reformer.
Walsh's subsequent offer to take $125,000 instead of $175,000 just made matters worse, particularly because the original discussion was to give her a $225,000 salary.
And the attempts by the governor's flacks to argue that Walsh's job was to reform the state's bonding agencies by bringing them under one roof simply wasn't believable, given her long political connection to the governor.
So the governor will come to SouthCoast to talk to the business community about his governorship. And with a little over 18 months remaining in his term, it may not be too late for him to get his act together. But his reputation has already suffered serious damage.
That doesn't mean Tim Cahill or Bill Galvin or even Charlie Baker will successfully wrest his governorship from him next year. But it does mean that all of Patrick's promise to be a reform governor, to be a governor who would change the business-as-usual way that this one-party state has long operated, has already gone by the wayside.

SouthCoastToday.com: Politically damaged governor limps into SouthCoast


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## union1 (Sep 18, 2002)

Im not a political scientist but I can answer this one in less than a sentence. Hes a fucking idiot. The people he put in charge are even bigger idiots than he is. The End!


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## rg1283 (Sep 14, 2005)

Would another Democrat do any better? All though Tim Cahill seems like a centrist democrat. Which in my opinion is good. 

Centrist Democrats like State Senator Richard Moore who sponsored the Katrina Gun Bill.


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## jettsixx (Dec 10, 2005)

I think I get it now, Patrick has "together we can", obama has "hope and change". I think that means "together we can hope for change." Unfortunately if you dont do anything more than hope, you will not achieve change. still ,THEY ARE BOT F**KIN IDIOTS! If nothing else I hope this past election teaches us all that we need to go out and vote.


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## Guest (Apr 18, 2009)

rg1283 said:


> Would another Democrat do any better? All though Tim Cahill seems like a centrist democrat. Which in my opinion is good.


Cahill was a city councilor in Quincy, and was generally good for the police. If he wants to be the next governor, he's it. A corpse could beat Coupe Deval in the primary, at this point. It's just a matter of someone having the balls to run against him.


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## BB-59 (Oct 19, 2005)

Well, I guesse the POTUS will be having another hack on the Federal payroll. I wonder how much he owes in back taxes.


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## Mad-Dog24 (May 31, 2008)

I am going to run for Governor; My first official act will be to purge all the "undesirables"


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## Hawk19 (Jan 9, 2009)

It would appear Patrick is vastly better at campaigning than he is at governing, like a student who tests well but doesn't actually learn a whole lot. IIRC, he spent a lot of political capital on his life sciences bill and a couple other pet projects early. If he had, instead, used that influence to push through a couple of campaign promises that are important to most everyone, like pension reform and public safety hiring, he'd be in a different situation right now IMHO.


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## Goose (Dec 1, 2004)

Wolfman said:


> I think we need to launch an immediate investigation into the sudden disappearance of all the "Together We Can" bumper stickers that we used to see everywhere.


They covered them with their Obama stickers...


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## sdb29 (Jul 17, 2002)

Mad-Dog24 said:


> I am going to run for Governor; My first official act will be to purge all the "undesirables"


Excellent Idea!! May I suggest a campaign slogan for you?

"Trample the weak, Hurdle the dead"


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## SinePari (Aug 15, 2004)

Whoever is in the corner office in the day after I retire, resign, or punch someone in the face, they'd better watch the hell out.


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## justanotherparatrooper (Aug 27, 2006)

SinePari said:


> Whoever is in the corner office in the day after I retire, resign, or punch someone in the face, they'd better watch the hell out.


 So hows the anger management therapy workin' for you?


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## Guest (Apr 19, 2009)

justanotherparatrooper said:


> So hows the anger management therapy workin' for you?


stll trying to find someone to see him after he punched the last three docs in the face...............


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## Killjoy (Jun 23, 2003)

> They covered them with their Obama stickers...


Not for long...there's an unexpected downturn of "Obamamessiah" bumper stickers...I wonder why?


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## rg1283 (Sep 14, 2005)

Especially Weatherman Books appearing next to the Obama Books!


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## Harley387 (May 1, 2002)

Deval Patrick and Barrack Obama.....poster children for "Why Affirmative Action Does Not Work".


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## SinePari (Aug 15, 2004)

justanotherparatrooper said:


> So hows the anger management therapy workin' for you?


It's only THERAPY if you want it to work. Besides, if you go see a shrink, you get those cool little pills that you can blame the psychotic episodes you have when you're a politician or celebrity.

SinePari for Governor, and I approve this message.


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## union1 (Sep 18, 2002)

Who's got my nomination papers started????


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