Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Deval Patrick's Fundraising

Today's Globe had a story about how Deval Patrick has been out fundraising Attorney General Tom Reilly. David from Blue Mass. Group has some good comments on this, so I won't comment too much further than what's already been said today, except to add that reports of the Patrick campaign's demise had been greatly exaggerated. I still think he's spending too much money, but he has not been having that much trouble raising it. Case in point: last week he hosted a fundraiser in Boston -- dubbed 'No Ordinary Evening' -- that saw around two hundred more people show up than were expected.

Patrick himself was on NewsNight With Jim Braude tonight, and he had this to say for himself, when asked if he can win:

I take nothing for granted, but understand I started from a cold start in February. We've raised as much money as the Attorney General, who's been at this in public life for most of his professional life. We've raised as much money as he has this year. We have two times the number of contributers as he has. In fact in the month of November, we had more individual contributors than he has ever had in any month in his political life. We are getting the message out. This is more than about a candidate. It's about inviting people back into a sense that this is their government and they are responsible for it and that government has a role to play -- not in solving every issue in everyone's life, but in helping people help themselves.
The rest of the interview is pretty good. Patrick makes it clear that all the talk about the income tax is a distraction from the real problem -- the exploding property tax, which he called "regressive" and "very hard on people on fixed incomes." I hope that this message is not lost over the course of the campaign, because that's really what I'd like to see change. All this talk about a 0.3% reduction in the income tax is just posturing, as far as I'm concerned. What I'd really like to see are some clever ideas to stop rising property taxes.