Deval's race to lose

In no small part due to the risk he took endorsing Cape Wind

By Jack Coleman

When an attorney from Milton named Deval Patrick entered the race for governor in the spring of 2005, he was widely seen as a long shot with little hope of winning.

At a fundraiser this week in Mashpee, Deval Patrick speaks to 60 supporters as hosts and brothers Dino (in the background) and Spyro Mitrokostas look on.

Patrick shares a laugh with local State Reps Matt Patrick, on left, and Cleon Turner. 

A Democrat hadn't been elected to the Corner Office in nearly two decades, despite an almost 3-1 advantage in registered voters over Republicans. For a candidate of color, the wait had been even longer -- none had held statewide office since Ed Brooke was ousted from the US Senate in 1978 by Paul Tsongas.

Yet in the 18 months since Patrick jumped in the campaign, it's become his race to lose. What happened in the interim?

When the post-mortems are written after November, a decision made by Patrick in October 2005 may well be remembered as the pivotal moment in the campaign.

Standing in the shadow of a whirring wind turbine on the Hull shoreline, Patrick announced he was endorsing the Cape Wind project, a proposal to build the country's first offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound. "What I want to bring as governor," Patrick said that day, "is a commitment to the future, and when we think about the future, it isn't enough to say that we hope that gas and oil prices will come down one day.

"It isn't enough to say that as long as we conserve today, as important as that is, we can manage our way through to sometime when oil again will be cheap," Patrick said. "We've got to put a stake in the ground, a real stake, that moving to alternatives today is the right decision for our common future."

Moving forward with Cape Wind could make the state "an incubator for alternative and renewable services and products," Patrick said. "If we make Massachusetts the center for that kind of business, for that kind of industry, the whole world will be our customer."

Risking to do what's right

"When we think about the future, it isn't enough to say that we hope that gas and oil prices will come down one day" - Deval Parick

But by endorsing Cape Wind, Patrick risked alienating the most powerful Democrat in the state -- US Senator Ted Kennedy, godfather of the state's all-Democratic congressional delegation with more than 40 years' experience on Capitol Hill. Kennedy was and remains a staunch opponent of the project.

For several months after the announcement in Hull, Patrick suffered the indignity of being described as the "only" major candidate or office-holder in the state who supported the wind farm, as if his advocacy were inherently anomalous.

Then between early February 2006 and the end of winter, three events occurred with profound implications for the campaign -- the Democratic caucuses, backroom machinations in Washington to derail Cape Wind, and Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound co-chairman Christy Mihos entering the race.

In a stunning upset, Patrick swept most of the caucuses, winning the endorsement and enthusiasm of party activists who are essential to any successful campaign. Patrick's success also brought an infusion of cash to his campaign, an area where he had been vulnerable.

Reilly stumbles, Kennedy grumbles

Later in February, Reilly chose State Rep. Marie St. Fleur, a Dorchester Democrat, as his running mate. By picking St. Fleur, who was born in Haiti and emigrated to the U.S., Reilly was implicitly acknowledging Patrick's color in the same way Mitt Romney's selection of Kerry Healey in 2002 was influenced by the gender of the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Shannon O'Brien.

"Politics are not my strong suit"
- Tom, Reilly

What Reilly failed to do was vet St. Fleur for skeletons in the closet. The Boston media, not known for its shrinking violets, pounced on the mistake and brought St. Fleur's tax travails into the public realm. After St. Fleur abruptly withdrew from the race, all Reilly could offer in his defense was the weak claim that "politics are not my strong suit." That the episode was mishandled by the state's top prosecutor did not go unnoticed.

Just as the St. Fleur debacle was playing out in the Bay State, the public began learning of legislative skullduggery in Washington to derail the wind farm. 

An amendment to a Coast Guard funding bill would ban offshore wind turbines within 1.5 miles of shipping lanes and ferry routes, effectively sidelining Cape Wind.

This was followed by a second proposal in late March to bestow unilateral veto power over Cape Wind with the governor of Massachusetts. While the amendments were proposed by legislators from distant Alaska, it was soon evident that Kennedy was instrumental in these efforts.

But the more Cape Wind's opponents tried to thwart the wind farm, the greater the level of public support for the project, as shown in numerous polls. By late May, Kennedy abandoned his call for a governor's veto. A face-saving compromise provided the Coast Guard commandant with oversight over wind farm permitting bearing a close resemblance to oversight he possessed before the compromise.

All of which brought a subtle but substantial boost to Patrick, the sole major candidate to endorse Cape Wind. With support for the proposal growing by the month, Patrick's backing of the project had come to be seen as not so anomalous after all.

The Alliance does its part to help

It was Christy Mihos, however, who brought an exquisite irony to the campaign when he announced his candidacy in March.

Mihos, a former board member of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, had been named co-chairman of the anti-wind farm Alliance in the summer of 2005, along with billionaire yachtsman and coal magnate Bill Koch.

Alliances's Mihos provides a huge boost to Cape Wind advocate Patrick while potentially costing Healey any chance of succeeding Romney

Irked by Romney's anointing of Healey as his presumptive successor, Mihos bolted from the Republican Party to run as an independent. Polls showed where Mihos soon garnered most of his support -- siphoning voters from Healey. The dynamic was reminiscent of the 1992 presidential campaign when Bill Clinton -- Patrick's old boss from his stint as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Justice Department -- benefited from Reform Party candidate Ross Perot's (similarly erratic) presence in the race.

Alliance co-chairman Mihos's candidacy provided a huge boost to Cape Wind advocate Patrick while potentially costing the anti-wind farm Healey any chance of succeeding Romney -- an irony to be savored.

With Mihos in the mix, Healey faces a daunting challenge in a year when the pendulum is swinging back to the Democrats. A wonkish academic little known outside Republican Party circles, Healey had lost two previous races for state representative before she was elected lieutenant governor in 2002.

That Romney is yet another Republican leaving the state after a limited stint as governor -- in this case, to campaign for president -- further burdens Healey with doubts about GOP interest in governing the state.

At the state Democratic convention in June, Patrick showed that his success in the caucuses had not been a fluke by soundly defeating Reilly, while businessman Chris Gabrieli barely managed to scrape together enough support for a spot on the ballot.

Polls; Patrick 35 percent, Reilly 19, Gabrieli 22

A State House News Service poll released earlier this month left little doubt about Patrick's impressive momentum. Patrick stood at 35 percent compared to 22 percent for Gabrieli and just 19 percent for Reilly.

Patrick's support for Cape Wind is not the only way he's unique among those running for governor. He’s also the only candidate with a credible claim to outsider status.

While support for Patrick had grown from 21 to 35 percent between March and June, Reilly's numbers plunged more than half in the same period, from 43 to 19 percent. Gabrieli, after initially pulling voters away from Patrick, peaked at 25 percent in May before his numbers began falling back to earth. The poll also showed all three Democrats beating Healey.

With less than two months remaining before the Democratic primary, Reilly and Gabrieli are confronted with a quickly narrowing timeframe to reverse the dynamics favoring Patrick.

Patrick's support for Cape Wind is not the only way he's unique among those running for governor. He’s also the only candidate with a credible claim to outsider status, which could prove decisive with voters weary of nosebleed fuel costs, the Big Dig's first fatality and endless carnage in the Middle East.

Romney parlayed his outsider credentials to success in 2002, as did George W. Bush in 2000, Bill Clinton in 1992 and Ronald Reagan in 1980.

GOP Congressional hopeful following the same path?

Earlier this week, two political events on the Cape overlapped on Tuesday night -- Harwich Republican Jeff Beatty formally announced his campaign to challenge Congressman Bill Delahunt, and Patrick appeared at a private fundraiser in Mashpee.

Word went out that Beatty, a decorated Army veteran and security consultant, planned to endorse Cape Wind at his campaign kickoff.

"It is good for us... if we just show the courage to take the step" - Deval Patrick

But Beatty only alluded to the wind farm in his remarks and said beforehand that he needed more information before coming to a decision.

It is worth remembering that Patrick initially approached Cape Wind in the same manner. Speaking as a candidate on Cape Cod for the first time in April 2005, he too merely alluded to Cape Wind when he spoke at a Democratic Party dinner.

During the next six months, Patrick learned more about the wind farm from supporters and opponents. "It turns out there are four or five sides and I've talked to all of them, or almost all of them, at this point," he said that day in Hull.

By Tuesday, a gestational nine months later, the connection between Patrick and Cape Wind was firmly established, and Patrick displayed none of Beatty's hesitancy.

Supporting Cape Wind "is not a simple decision and it's certainly a politically complex decision," Patrick told about 60 supporters, "but it's the right decision -- for our energy needs, our environmental needs, the economic merits of the project on its own, but also the symbol it can represent of the kind of economy and the kind of environmental stewardship that we can show going forward."

"It is good for us and if we just show the courage to take the step," Patrick said, "and make the mistakes we are going to make -- we're going to -- that's in the nature of human existence -- but at least we will have taken a step forward, and one step forward leads to another."

"That is how you build an economy, it seems to me, and strengthen an economy," Patrick added. "And there are ways we can do this that are not just about the wind farm, but it's about the companies that build the turbines, and the ones that manufacture and install the solar panels, and that consult on the conservation strategies, and that assemble the hybrid vehicles."

"Politicians opposed to Cape Wind are becoming irrelevant to the future" - Bill Eddy

"That's what I want in Massachusetts -- all of that -- a global center around renewable and alternative energy," Patrick said.

Whether Patrick's support for Cape Wind proves pivotal will become more apparent after the primary in September and general election six weeks later. But it's already clear that Patrick's decision to endorse the wind farm, taken at huge risk, altered the campaign in ways few could have anticipated.

As Clean Power Now board member Bill Eddy observed after Patrick spoke in Mashpee, "politicians opposed to Cape Wind are becoming irrelevant to the future."

Jack Coleman is a writer and editor who blogs in support of the Cape Wind project at windfarmersalmanac.com