Patrick's Day

Well, it’s Patrick's day here in Boston, as in Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Deval Patrick. He just won his party’s hotly contested primary election earlier this evening defeating the current Attorney General Tom Reilly and venture capitalist Chris Gabrieli. The immediate implications for Patrick’s victory over his more moderate opponents include the fact that the Republican candidate, current Lt. Governor Kerry Healey, now has a significantly improved chance to win the general election that did not exist hours ago. Although not a lot here in Boston is made of it, former Clintonite Deval Patrick resides far to the left of his now vanquished fellow Democrats on the political spectrum. Among Patrick’s little publicized positions on issues include: giving tuition breaks to illegal immigrants, the advocacy of issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, the opposition of the MCAS graduation requirement, and opposition to the growth of charter schools. If only the other two candidates had bothered to point out any of these far left positions, they might have had a chance to defeat Patrick.

Interestingly, what was pointed out and made very much an issue of was Chris Gabrieli’s ties to corporate sponsors who would stand to gain tremendously if a one billion dollar public funding proposal of stem cell research, that Gabrieli advocated, was realized. Amazingly, this fact had to be pointed out by the Republican candidate Kerry Healey who may have strategized that Gabrieli was the largest obstacle in the way of realizing her own gubernatorial ambitions. Of this move Gabrieli stated, on the steps of the State House that, “The Healey campaign is doing their best impression of Karl Rove”. While it is always annoying that Karl Rove is bashed precisely because of his effectiveness, Gabrieli, in my opinion was correct. The Healey ad campaign that bombarded the airwaves took the proverbial wind out of Gabrieli’s sails, allowing a possibly unelectable far left candidate to sweep in and steal the hearts of Massachusetts Democrats (especially the Boston Globe) everywhere. Of course, many left leaning Boston pundits mischaracterized Healey as “being against stem cell research”. This is a common mischaracterization, which conflates the idea of being against the public funding of stem cell research with being against stem cell research period. But that issue, at least here in Boston, is for another day.

Many local pundits assert that Kerry Healey would not stand a chance against the tough on crime and more moderate Attorney General Tom Reilly. And Chris Gabrieli, for his part, actually shares some of the same reasonable (read conservative) opinions on immigration and taxation that Healey does. Healey’s chances to win being better against Reilly or Gabrieli is unclear. What is clear is that Healey’s chances to acquire the top Beacon Hill position are vastly improved against a far left candidate in Deval Patrick. Also, the turn out of voters in today’s Democratic primary was rather low (about 20% of eligible voters). That number will likely increase in the general election when conservatives like myself (who actually vote) are given the chance to weigh in as I did last time for Romney.

Congratulations to Mr. Patrick on his victory and thank you to Massachusetts Democrats for Selecting a member of the far left to go up against the level headed conservative Kerry Healey. Healey for guv in 06’.