Why Deval Patrick Won
by Brian Reich | 20 Sep 2006, 2:00am
Deval Patrick captured Tuesday’s Democratic nomination for Governor in Massachusetts by a substantial margin (50% vs. 27% for venture capitalist Chris Gabrieli and 23% for Attorney General Tom Reilly), and in the process may have ushered in a new era for Massachusetts politics.
Deval Patrick won for a lot of reasons — he was a new, fresh face in a state screaming for leadership and accountability, he has experience and vision to suggest that a new, more successful course can be charted for a state who’s economy and social policies are, at best, mixed up right now. But, perhaps most of all, I believe Deval Patrick won the Democratic nomination for Governor last night because he ran a different kind of campaign. As the Boston Globe wrote this morning:
But a key factor in Patrick’s victory appears to have been the field organization that he and his staff built. It drew heavily on the Internet to organize supporters and to raise over $1 million in campaign donations. His political base included 8,000 volunteers across the state, many of them new to politics, and a field organization that identified over 100,000 committed Patrick voters.
I will use this space to analyze some of the elements of his online campaign over the next few weeks and highlight the pieces that all campaigns should be leveraging to educate, engage, and mobilize voters. The political establishment from around the country will be watching the seven week campaign in Massachusetts to see whether Deval Patrick, the first African American nominee for Governor in Massachusetts can take home the prize in November, focusing mostly on the money raised and spent, television ads run, and campaign messages the Republican nominee, Lt. Gov Kerry Healey and Patrick use to set themselves apart from each other. They should be watching what Patrick and his campaign team does online because it may very well set the tone for how politics is waged - online and off - for years to come.
