Deval Patrick

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Deval Patrick, Democratic Candidate for Governor of Massachusetts

Deval Patrick (b. 1956 in Chicago, Illinois) is a Massachusetts businessman, lawyer and a Democratic candidate for Governor in the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial race. He received the official endorsement at the 2006 Democratic State Convention on June 3rd, 2006 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and won the nomination on September 19th against Chris Gabrieli and Tom Reilly. He will now face Kerry Healey in the general election in Novermber, 2006.

Biography

Patrick was born on Chicago's South Side in 1956, into an African-American family living on welfare and residing in a one-bedroom apartment (his father was Pat Patrick, a member of jazz musician Sun Ra's band). While in middle school, a teacher of his referred him to A Better Chance, a Boston not-for-profit organization that provides urban youth with scholarships to attend private secondary schools. Patrick earned a scholarship to attend Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts.

Patrick graduated from Milton Academy in 1974 and from Harvard College in 1978. He then spent a year working with the United Nations in Africa, and enrolled in a law school there. In 1979, Patrick returned to the United States and enrolled at Harvard Law School. At Harvard, Patrick was elected president of the Legal Aid Bureau, where he first worked defending poor families in Middlesex County. Upon graduation, he briefly worked as a law clerk for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, then became an attorney for the NAACP.

While working with the NAACP, Patrick met future President Bill Clinton, then serving as governor of Arkansas. Clinton was being sued over a voting rights case, and the two worked out a settlement. Also while working with the NAACP, Patrick married Diane Bemus, an attorney specializing in labor and employment law; they now have two daughters, Sarah and Katherine. In 1986, Patrick went to work as a private attorney for Hill & Barlow, a now-dissolved Boston law firm, became a partner in 1990, and continued volunteer work with the NAACP.

In 1994, Clinton appointed Patrick to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. In this position, he worked on a range of issues, including racial profiling, human trafficking, and discrimination. He also played a key role as an advisor to post-apartheid South Africa during this time and helped to create their civil rights laws, which are now some of the most progressive in the world. As a member of that administration, he was derided by some as the "quota king" for his strong stance on affirmative action.

In 1997, Patrick returned to Boston to join the firm Day, Berry, & Howard, settled a case for Texaco, and was appointed as a legal executive for the company. From 1999 to 2004, Patrick worked as an executive vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary of the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta and New York City. He resigned and returned to Massachusetts in 2004 because he felt that it was unethical for the company to decline to investigate major allegations of violence against workers in Colombian bottling plants (see Coca-Cola Company Criticisms for details). He was hired again, however, as a consultant to Coca-Cola, and continues to hold that position to this day.

In 2004, he was appointed to the board of directors of the firm that controls Ameriquest, a mortgage company, because of his 20 years of fighting predatory lending, in order to try to fix the problem. Ameriquest subsequently agreed to a $325 million dollar settlement regarding their predatory lending practices in 49 states. Patrick stepped down from the board on July 2, 2006: he felt that he had achieved as much as he could, given the circumstances, and that it had become a distraction from the campaign due to negative attacks from his opponent, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly.

Deval and Diane Patrick have lived in Milton since 1989. They have two daughters.

Views

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. It’s disappointing to see the governor act like so many other politicians who choose this issue to score political points." This position puts him at odds with Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney who supports a "no doubt" form of capital punishment.

Criticism

The controversial 3rd Circuit Court case Piscataway v. Taxman occured during Patrick's tenure in the Clinton Administration, in which Sharon Taxman, a white woman with a Masters degree, was fired over Debra Williams, a black woman with a Bachelors degree, due to budget constraints and the school's diversity policy. Both teachers were hired on the same day and each had the same amount of seniority, but the school declined to flip a coin as it usually did to settle these matters. Taxman sued and prevailed in US District Court, but then Patrick encouraged the Justice Department, which had already agreed to support Taxman, to switch sides, citing that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had not been violated because Taxman was a white woman. Taxman eventually dropped her suit after Jesse Jackson and others, who feared the case would set a precedent that would undercut affirmative action, raised upwards of $400,000 to cover a settlement. Patrick characterized those who did not share his view on slavery as a basis for affirmative action, saying that they believed "once slavery was ended, nothing more had to be done."

External links

• Deval Patrick for Governor - Deval Patrick's Campaign Site
• Deval Patrick TV - Deval Patrick's Internet TV Site
• The Source - Deval Patrick's Campaign Blog
• Students for Deval Patrick - College Student Site Supporting Deval Patrick
• The Deval Experience - a pro-Patrick blog
• Killer Coke: Deval Patrick Exposed - criticism of Deval Patrick