The numbers aren't very good for Deval Patrick, but that's no surprise. The governor's casino plan went down in ashes earlier this year just as the economy began to tank. Since then, any radiance Patrick still had was largely eclipsed by Barack Obama and an imploding global economy.
Last week, Western New England College Polling Institute released figures that show a growing ambivalence toward Patrick among Massachusetts voters. According to the telephone poll of 548 registered voters conducted Nov. 6-13, about half approved of the job Patrick is doing while only a third of respondents said he should be re-elected. More than a quarter of those polled disapproved of Patrick's performance to date, with equal numbers saying he does not deserve to be re-elected.
Perhaps more striking than Patrick's lukewarm approval rating was a WNEC poll finding that large numbers of voters had no opinion about Patrick, with 37 percent unable to say whether he deserved another term. That uncertainty about a second term for Patrick extended across party lines, with 31 percent of Democrats and Republicans and 41 percent of independent voters saying they did not know whether Patrick should be re-elected. (Complete results of the poll are available online at www.wnec.edu/news.)
While the current economic crisis in Massachusetts and beyond undoubtedly hurt Patrick's poll numbers—55 percent of voters say the economy is the most important problem facing the state today—WNEC's snapshot of Patrick's position among voters is a likely reflection of the governor's inability to define and focus his administration following his spectacularly successful run for the office.
In hindsight, it appears that Patrick may have anticipated trouble in his early days as governor: he laced many media interviews between his election and inauguration with warnings about the corrosive effect cynicism would have on the hopeful "Together We Can" call to action that helped him secure the corner office. Immediately on the heels of his inauguration, Patrick came under criticism in the Boston media for equipping himself with a new Cadillac and adorning his office with new, expensive drapery. It was a symbolic faux pas at best, but Patrick was unable to match the negative coverage with any positive news.
Patrick set environmentalists on edge by trying to diminish the ability of concerned citizens to challenge proposed development. He launched a successful plan to deregulate automobile insurance in Massachusetts before turning his sights on casino gambling—an issue that many lawmakers on Beacon Hill felt had been settled when the last attempt to legalize gaming went down to defeat in the late '90s. Patrick's stewardship of the casino issue came under attack not only from opponents, but from proponents, who saw the governor as unpersuasive and politically tone deaf in his effort to license three or more casinos in the state.
When the Advocate's Andrew Varnon first profiled Patrick as he began his grassroots campaign for governor in 2005—a campaign that served as a prelude to Obama's hopeful, highly-organized and disciplined campaign—Varnon made note of Patrick's relationship with Obama, who'd attained instant national celebrity just one year earlier as a featured speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Patrick's relationship with Obama has become a loud part of the background noise of his governorship, leading to rampant speculation that Patrick will abandon his office to become part of the president-elect's team in Washington. Patrick has repeatedly denied such rumors. And though his name reportedly was on Obama's short list for Attorney General, Patrick appears, if anything, slightly diminished by Obama's historic election and the comparisons made to the likes of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy.
At this stage, however, Patrick's connection to Obama is probably the source of his greatest opportunity should he remain governor. Arguably, voters know there isn't much a governor can do about the current global economic crisis and will look to the new president for answers. In the meantime, Patrick stands to benefit from having an old friend in the White House, which is likely to extend a helping hand to the Bay State more freely than the Bush administration ever did.
