A Second Herald Hit Piece on Patrick

Well, maybe not a hit piece, but the Herald has now devoted an entire article to how wealthy Deval Patrick is.

Patrick's home is far from the more modest homesteads of possible candidates Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who owns a $471,300 home in Brighton, and Attorney General Tom Reilly, who rents a 1,163-square-foot apartment in Watertown.

It's also seemingly far from Patrick's humble roots and the type of people Patrick promised to represent on the campaign trail.

While it might be worthwhile to talk about the financial status of the candidates, this type of editorializing disguised as news is just tiresome. The article goes on to call Patrick "unapologetic" about his weatlh, as if he should be sorry that he brought himself up out of poverty. Presumably this is to negate any disadvange Governor Romney's own personal fortune might pose in a potential contest with Patrick, never mind that Romney was born into the most politically connected family in Michigan while Patrick's life story could have been written by Horatio Alger.

This comes on the heels of a Sunday Herald article that criticized Patrick's campaign for buying a map. Patrick himself gave this article as an example of "politics as bloodsport" during his remarks this past Monday. His response was to note that the map helped him get to parts of the state that Romney hasn't been to in a long time.

That event was the first time I'd had occasion to see Deval Patrick give a speech. While some Massachusetts progressives may have oversold him, I have to admit that he is the most charismatic of the current presumptive crop of Democratic candidates for governor. He took a page out of the Dean playbook by saying that he hoped his campaign would revive a sense of civic engagement. Also, he surprisingly came out in support of the proposal to move the primaries to May or June, in contrast to Galvin and Reilly. While such a move would potentially hurt his campaign, he noted that it would be better for the system. What really impressed me, though, was that his prepared remarks lasted roughly half an hour and he spent the rest of his time taking questions from the crowd. He knew that many of us were there just to check him out and he wasn't afraid to devote the majority of his time to respond to the group.