Deval Patrick

Deval Laurdine Patrick (born July 31, 1956) is an American politician, civil rights lawyer and business executive who serves as the 71st Governor of Massachusetts. A member of the Democratic Party, Patrick served as the Assistant United States Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division under President Bill Clinton. He is the state's first African-American governor and the third of only four African-Americans to serve as governor in a U.S. state, after P. B. S. Pinchback of Louisiana, Douglas Wilder of Virginia, and preceding David Paterson of New York.

Born to and raised by a single mother on the South Side of Chicago, Patrick earned a scholarship to Milton Academy in Massachusetts in the eighth grade. He went on to attend Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was President of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. After graduating he practiced law with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He later joined a Boston law firm, where he was named a partner at the age of 34. In 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed Patrick Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, where he worked on issues including racial profiling and police misconduct. Patrick returned to Boston in 1997 to work in private law. In the following years he worked as general counsel for Texaco in New York City and Coca-Cola in Atlanta, which were both facing large racial discrimination settlements.

When he announced his candidacy for the 2006 gubernatorial election in Massachusetts, Patrick was initially seen as a dark horse candidate, but ultimately won the Democratic primary against veteran politicians Thomas Reilly and Chris Gabrielli. He went on to defeat Republican Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey in the general election, and was inaugurated in January 2007. In his first term, Patrick oversaw the implementation of the state's 2006 health care reform program which had been enacted under Mitt Romney, increased funding to education and life sciences, won a federal Race to the Top education grant, passed an overhaul of state transportation industries to create the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, and increased the state sales tax from 5% to 6.25%. Under Patrick, Massachusetts joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and greatly expanded services to veterans. His two legislative battles to implement casino gambling failed: he could not win the approval of the House of Representatives in March 2008, and he vetoed a bill passed by the legislature in August 2010 for going too far.

Patrick was re-elected in the 2010 gubernatorial election against Republican Charlie Baker and Independent Tim Cahill. His second term began on January 6, 2011, and in an interview with The Boston Globe, Patrick declared he will not seek re-election in 2014.

Early life and education
Patrick was born on the South Side of Chicago, where his family resided in a two-bedroom apartment in Robert Taylor Homes housing projects. In 1959, his father, Laurdine "Pat" Patrick, a member of jazz musician Sun Ra's band, left Patrick's mother, Emily Mae (née Wintersmith), Deval, and their daughter, Rhonda (who is one year Deval's senior) in order to play music in New York City and because he had fathered a daughter, La'Shon Anthony, by another woman. Deval reportedly had a strained relationship with his father, who opposed his choice of high school, but they eventually reconciled. Patrick was raised by his mother, who traces her roots to American slaves in the American South, in the state of Kentucky. The family spent many months living on welfare.

While Patrick was in middle school, one of his teachers referred him to A Better Chance, a national non-profit organization for identifying, recruiting and developing leaders among academically gifted minority students, which enabled him to attend Milton Academy. Patrick graduated from Milton Academy in 1974. After high school, Patrick became the first person in his family to attend college. He graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. cum laude in English and American literature in 1978. He then spent a year working with the United Nations in Africa. In 1979, Patrick returned to the United States and enrolled at Harvard Law School. While in law school, Patrick was elected president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, where he first worked defending poor families in Middlesex County, Massachusetts.

Patrick graduated from Harvard Law School with a J.D. cum laude in 1982. He proceeded to fail the State Bar of California exam twice but ended up passing the California bar on his third try. Patrick then served as a law clerk to Judge Stephen Reinhardt on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for one year. In 1983, he joined the staff of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), where he worked on death penalty and voting rights cases. While at LDF, he met Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, when he sued Clinton in a voting case. In 1986, he joined the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow and was named partner in 1990, at the age of 34. While at Hill & Barlow he managed high-profile engagements such as acting as Desiree Washington's attorney in her civil lawsuit against Mike Tyson.

Clinton Administration
In 1994, President Bill Clinton nominated Patrick as the Assistant United States Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, subsequently confirmed by the United States Senate.

Federal affirmative action policy was under judicial and political review, and Patrick defended Clinton's policy. Patrick also enforced federal laws concerning treatment of incarcerated criminals, to the extent that one warden called him a "zealot."

Business career
In 1997, Patrick returned to Boston to join the firm Day, Berry & Howard, and was appointed by the federal district court to serve as Chairman of Texaco's Equality and Fairness Task Force to oversee implementation of the terms of a race discrimination settlement at Texaco. Working with employees at all levels, Patrick and his Task Force examined and reformed Texaco's complex corporate employment culture, and created a model for fostering an equitable workplace.

Some gay rights activists criticized him for his tenure on the United Airlines (UAL) board. During this time, the company originally fought an ordinance requiring that it offer domestic partnership benefits but Patrick successfully encouraged UAL to offer such benefits to all employees, making it the first airline to do so.

From 2004 to 2006, he served on the board of directors of ACC Capital Holdings, the parent company of Ameriquest and Argent Mortgage. He joined the board at the request of Ameriquest's founder Roland Arnall. Deval Patrick was one of five board members of ACC Capital Holdings until he resigned in 2006. During his tenure on the board, Ameriquest and Argent originated over $80 billion dollars in subprime mortgages. He also served on the boards of Reebok, Coca Cola, and the Ford Foundation.

2006 campaign
In 2005, Patrick announced his candidacy for Governor of Massachusetts. He was at first seen as a dark horse candidate, facing veteran Massachusetts campaigners Thomas "Tom" Reilly and Chris Gabrielli in the Democratic primary.

Patrick secured the nomination in the September 2006 primary, winning 49% of the vote in a three-way race. In the general election, he faced Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, a Republican, Christy Mihos, running as an Independent, and Grace Ross, of the Green-Rainbow Party.

2010 campaign for re-election
On April 2, 2009, Patrick confirmed that alongside Lt. Governor Timothy Murray, he would run for re-election as Governor of Massachusetts. On June 5, 2010, he was nominated by the Democrats and ran against Republican Charlie Baker, Independent Tim Cahill, and Green/Rainbow Jill Stein. A Rasmussen Reports poll released on September 28 showed Patrick leading Baker 48%-47%. Patrick earned 48% of the votes, defeating Baker by a 6% margin.

2006 Transition
Before taking office, Patrick named a transition team headed by lawyer Michael Angelini, bank executive Ronald Homer, and Weld administration economic affairs secretary Gloria Cordes Larson. In his first meetings with the legislative leadership, he proposed his first action would be to hire 1000 new police officers and to expand full-day kindergarten statewide. He has since scaled back his original proposal and will hire only 250 officers due to the effects of the economic recession on the state's budget. As part of the transition, Patrick created a series of working groups who held public meetings to advise him on various policy areas.

Inauguration
Breaking with the tradition of being inaugurated in the House Chamber of the Massachusetts State House, Deval Patrick and Tim Murray took the oath of office, and Patrick delivered his inaugural address, outdoors on the West Portico of the State House facing Boston Common. This allowed a larger part of the public to witness and take part first hand in the event, and was intended to signal more open, transparent, and accessible government. The governor-elect was facing the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, just across Beacon Street, a memorial to the first black regiment in the U.S. Civil War. He took his oath of office on the Mendi Bible, which was given to then-Congressman John Quincy Adams by the freed American slaves from the ship La Amistad in honor of his heritage.

A series of regional inaugural balls, seven in all, were held to bring the inauguration to the citizens of the Commonwealth. These celebrations took place on Cape Cod, in Worcester, Dartmouth, Pittsfield, Springfield, and Boston.

Tenure
In his first term, Patrick oversaw the implementation of the state's 2006 health care reform program, increased funding to education and life sciences, won a federal Race to the Top education grant, passed an overhaul of state transportation industries to create the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, worked with the legislature to defend the legality of same-sex marriage, and increased the state sales tax from 5% to 6.25%. Under Patrick, Massachusetts joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and greatly expanded services to veterans. His two legislative battles to implement casino gambling failed: he could not win the approval of the House of Representatives in March 2008, and he vetoed a bill passed by the legislature in August 2010 for going too far.

During the 2006 Gubernatorial Election Patrick faced criticism for having once written letters to the parole board describing correspondence from Benjamin LaGuer, a man convicted of a brutal eight-hour rape, as "thoughtful, insightful, eloquent, [and] humane". Patrick contributed $5,000 towards the DNA testing which linked LaGuer to the crime. Once the DNA test proved LaGuer's guilt, Patrick withdrew his support for the inmate's release.

In the early months of Patrick's administration, a series of decisions the governor later conceded as missteps brought substantial unfavorable press. These included spending almost $11,000 on drapery for the governor's state house suite, changing the state's customary car lease from a Ford Crown Victoria to a Cadillac, and hiring a staff assistant (who had previously helped chair his election campaign) for the Commonwealth's first lady at an annual salary of almost $75,000. Emerging from a weekend of working on the state's budget and calling for cuts in services to taxpayers, Patrick responded in a February 20, 2007 press conference that "I realize I cannot in good conscience ask the agencies to make those choices without being willing to make them myself"

Patrick subsequently reimbursed the Commonwealth for the cost of the drapery and furniture purchased for the state house, and the additional monthly difference in his car lease. First Lady Diane Patrick's staff assistant, Amy Gorin, resigned.

Later in the same month Patrick again came under fire, this time for contacting Citigroup Executive Committee chair, and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin on behalf of the financially beleaguered mortgage company Ameriquest, a subsidiary of ACC Capital Holdings, that had been accused of predatory lending practices and of which Patrick is a former board member. Both Citigroup and ACC Capital Holdings have substantial holdings in Massachusetts. Patrick attempted to deflect criticism claiming he was calling not as governor but as a private citizen. Later Patrick backed down, stating "I appreciate that I should not have made the call. I regret the mistake."

In December 2008, Patrick faced criticism from Massachusetts Republicans for the hiring of attorney and real estate consultant Dana Harrell to the newly created position of state Director of Real Estate Services. Harrell is a neighbor of Deval Patrick in Milton, and he and his wife have contributed to the governor's election campaign and to the Democratic State Committee. The appointment to the $120,000-per-year position came at a time when the state faced a $1.4 billion revenue shortfall which may cause Patrick to layoff 1,000 state workers and cut state aid to towns and cities.

Patrick came to the defense of Presidential candidate Barack Obama during the Democratic primary when it was reported that a few key phrases from one of Obama's stump speech were very similar to words used during Patrick's own 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial run. The charges of plagiarism were largely dismissed after Patrick explained that he had encouraged Obama to use the same quotes.

On September 24, 2009, Patrick appointed Paul G. Kirk as the interim U.S. senator in the wake of Ted Kennedy's death.

In August 2011, Patrick declared a state of emergency in Massachusetts as the state was facing the arrival of Hurricane Irene.

Patrick has spoken at both the 2008 Democratic National Convention and 2012 Democratic National Convention, endorsing his friend and fellow Democrat Barack Obama. After his 2012 speech, a reporter asked if Patrick was interested in 2016 U.S. presidential election bid. He responded, "Just chatter... I'm gonna finish my term [as governor] in 2014. I'm gonna return to the private sector where I've spent … most of my career." However, Patrick would not rule out a run in the more distant future.

On January 30, 2013, Patrick chose his former chief-of-staff William "Mo" Cowan to serve as interim U.S. senator until a special election to fill the seat left vacant by Secretary of State designate John Kerry.

Education
Throughout his term in office, Patrick has made achieving "world-class public education" a main priority of his administration. Patrick also committed a historic amount of public funds to Massachusetts schools, introducing legislation to tackle a persistent education gap among minority students, and winning the national Race to the Top competition. Patrick now supports a doubling of the number of charter schools in Massachusetts. In his first year in office, Patrick proposed making community college free to all Massachusetts high school graduates.

Same-sex marriage
Patrick favored the legalizing of same-sex marriage because of the fundamental principle that "citizens come before their government as equals". He worked with the state legislature to prevent a ballot measure eliminating same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, which protected the state's first-in-the-nation same-sex marriage allowance.

Death penalty
Patrick opposes the death penalty, saying that "the death penalty does not work. It hasn't worked in actually deterring crime, and it won't work for Massachusetts." This position had put him at odds with ex-Lt. Governor Kerry Healey, who wanted to "reinstate the death penalty for felons convicted of killing a law enforcement officer, judge, prosecutor or corrections officer".

Energy policy
Patrick proposed a bill that would streamline Massachusetts' permit appeals process for wind-energy projects. The Wind Energy Sitting Reform bill would reduce the permitting process from the current litigation limbo to nine to 19 months.

Gun control
In 2010 Governor Deval Patrick pushed for legislation to limit the purchase of firearms, citing a series of gun violence incidents and violent crime in Boston. Gun Owners' Action League, the official National Rifle Association state chapter, has given Governor Patrick an "F" grade, signifying a pro-gun control stance. In 2011, Patrick proposed new legislation that would require more stringent regulations on firearms. During an event surrounding the announcement, Patrick said one of his main goals was to "stop children from killing children." Patrick also reported that he would ask for $10 million in private and public funding to help "fill the gaps."

Health care
Patrick has made implementing the state's 2006 health care reform law a signature achievement. Currently, over 98% of Massachusetts residents have health care insurance, more than any other state.

Patrick has made bringing down health care costs a priority in his second term and has proposed a number of reforms, including moving to a global payment system. In 2010, he successfully prodded health care insurance companies to negotiate with the state before introducing increases in premiums.

Stem cell research
Patrick is a proponent of stem cell research and was critical of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney for vetoing a stem cell bill. He proposes creating a bonding bill similar to California's recent path, and using it to invest in stem cell research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, creating a simultaneous boost to the commonwealth's institutions of public higher education.

Life Sciences
In 2008, Patrick passed the Life Sciences Initiative, a $1 billion, 10-year initiative to invest in Massachusetts' life sciences industry. In 2012, he met with life science representatives from the UK, Israel, and Chile.

Patrick was honored as Governor of the Year in 2008 by BIO, a biotech industry group.

Immigration
Patrick has called immigration a federal issue and has supported the McCain-Kennedy plan to tighten border control and create "pathway[s] to citizenship" for immigrants who have established lives in America.

Casino gambling
Patrick crafted and signed a bill that allows for the construction and operation of three resort-style casinos in the state. He argued that these casinos would generate $2 billion for the state economy and add $400 million in annual casino revenue and $200 million in fees per license to the state coffers as well as add $50 million to $80 million in sales, meal, and hotel taxes. He also touted that the casinos would create 30,000 construction jobs and 20,000 permanent jobs.

Patrick proposed that the revenue generated would be spent to beef up local law enforcement, create a state gambling regulatory agency, repair roads and bridges ($200 million), gambling addiction treatment ($50 million) and the remainder would go towards property tax relief.

Patrick's casino plan had faced strong opposition from Salvatore DiMasi, the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. DiMasi questioned the governor's projections of new jobs, revenues to be generated and was an opposed to what he referred to as a casino culture saying: "Do we want to usher in a casino culture– with rampant bankruptcies, crime and social ills– or do we want to create a better Massachusetts for all sectors of the society?"  Casino gaming lobbying in Massachusetts has also received scrutiny for associations with the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal and efforts by the Mashpee Wampanoag people to secure rights to a casino outside of the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. In 2009, Governor Deval Patrick was among the top campaign contribution recipients from casino lobbying interests, and from financiers backing the Wampanoag casino interests.

On March 20, 2008, the Massachusetts House of Representatives rejected Patrick's casino bill by a vote of 108 to 46. Despite the overwhelming vote, questions were raised by critics of DiMasi as to the tactics he used to win. These included allegations that he promised a subsequent vote on a bill that would allow slot machines at the state's four racetracks and the pre-vote promotions of six lawmakers who had been thought to support the bill, but either abstained or voted against the bill. DiMasi denied that any promise had been made on the race track bill and denied that the promotions were connected to the casino bill vote.

Patrick's conduct was also criticized and his commitment to the bill questioned when it was revealed that he was not in the state on the day the bill was voted on in the legislature. As the bill was being voted down, Patrick was in New York City on personal business, finalizing a $1.35 million dollar deal with Broadway Books, an imprint of Random House, to publish his autobiography.

By mid-2010, the house and senate passed a bill with plans for three resort-style casinos and two slot parlors. However, Patrick vetoed it as he previously stated that he would only accept one slot parlor. When the 2011 casino legislation was still in debate, an investigative report in The Boston Globe revealed the governor violated his self-imposed policy of not accepting money from or meeting with lobbyists for the gambling industry by accepting more than $6,000 in campaign contributions and meeting with and attending fundraisers hosted by gaming lobbyists.

The Governor signed the legislation into law in December 2011. Its implementation, however, has seen hurdles and delays. The Governor's point man on crafting gaming legislation and negotiating a state compact with the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, Assistant Secretary for Policy & Economic Development Carl Stanley McGee, was forced to resign from his appointment to direct the newly formed Massachusetts Gaming Commission following reports of 2007 charges that he molested a child in Florida. Stan McGee was forced to return to his economic development post where he still oversees casino policies for the Governor The scandal resulted in the Massachusetts legislature passing a bill and overriding a veto by Governor Patrick requiring background checks on casino regulators.

Transportation
The legislatively chartered Transportation Finance Commission (TFC) reported in 2007 that over the next 20 years there would be $15–$19 billion gap between revenues and necessary expenditures, just to maintain existing transportation system in Massachusetts. The Commission identified several reforms and revenue options to close the gap. The Patrick Administration lobbied for and passed a major transportation reform bill, which incorporated many of the TFC-recommended reforms, and which created the Massachusetts Department of Transportation by merging smaller transportation agencies.

Patrick proposed raising the state gas tax by 19¢ per gallon to forestall Massachusetts Turnpike toll and MBTA fare increases, fully fund Regional Transit Authority and Turnpike operations, and address part of the capital shortfall identified by the TFC, but this was defeated in the state legislature. Instead, a sales tax increase of 1.25% was passed, with part of that dedicated to transportation. This was enough to prevent the short-term toll and fare increases, but did not address the long-term funding gap.

Patrick has been a supporter of the South Coast Rail Link project.

Personal life
Deval Patrick and his wife, Diane Patrick, a lawyer specializing in labor and employment law, married in 1984. They have lived in Milton, Massachusetts since 1989 and have two daughters, Sarah and Katherine. In July 2008, Katherine publicly announced that she is a lesbian, and mentioned that her father did not know this while he was fighting against a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have banned same-sex marriage. In a joint interview Patrick expressed support for his daughter and said he was proud of her. In addition to his Milton home, Patrick and his family own a home in Richmond, Massachusetts.