MASS POLITICS, MINORITY POLITICS. Here in the Bay State, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick is headed for a decisive and historic win. Historic, because he will be Massachusett's first African-American governor, and only the second elected nationwide, ever. Historic also, because race was not really even a part of the conversation about him locally until Republican candidate and Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey ran a series of racially-charged ads against him, accusing him of being so soft on crime that he was virtually pro-rapist. Massachusetts voters, to their everlasting credit, roundly rejected Healey's scare-mongering tactics, and solidified their support for Patrick and intensified their dislike for her in the wake of the barrage. (Unlike Tennessee voters, whose reaction -- as I discuss over at TheGarance.com -- to Bob Corker's attacks on Harold Ford may well have cost him the race.) As Patrick gets set to take the statehouse -- at last putting a Democratic governor back in charge of this very Blue state -- it's worth reflecting on how he got to this point. Patrick, like Barack Obama before him, was very far from the Democratic favorite at the start of his race. The local machine put forward Attorney General Tom Reilly, who was favored to win at first, but who later collapsed of his own accord after wealthy businessman Chris Gabrielli, whom he'd snubbed, jumped into the race and beat him in the primary, in which Reilly came in a humiliating third. (Patrick to coasted to primary victory as those two slugged it out among themselves.) Like Obama, who started campaigning for him as log ago as June, Patrick is a Harvard Law School graduate and part of the new generation of African-American politicians whose careers were launched by exclusive universities rather than community organizations or patronage politics. Their success as candidates, despite being overlooked by their local Democratic machines, suggests that the Democrats would do well in future races to consider drawing from a deeper pool than they have tended to, and to consider the power of well-credentialed "outsider" African-American candidates to retake Blue State posts that have for too long been filled by Republicans. Regardless of the outcome of tonight's race, it's also worth noting that Ford has performed much better than anyone anticipated, and certainly ran a much more competitive race than many machine Democrats expected him to. Despite his young age, though, he is more of a machine politician than either Obama or Patrick were, and that may have had as much of an impact on his ability to break through in this year of change voting as his race.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
