Free Republic

After sending Bubba out to shore up the barricades last week, Obama himself is joining frantic efforts to save Democrats in districts recently thought safe for eternity... and they were- until now.He and the DNC have apparently deduced that 2010 is indeed to be an election like no other... and that they'll be the ones mostly on the receiving-end of all that pent-up electoral rage. Polls say it's getting uglier for them by the day, and the President's actions betray just how scared they are... even in deep-blue Massachusetts. Gov. Deval Patrick’s campaign announced today that President Obama will be...

In an apparent move to distance Deval Patrick from U.S. Rep. John Tierney’s family troubles, the congressman’s newly convicted wife was removed yesterday as co-chair of a deep-pockets fund-raiser North Shore Democrats are holding in the governor’s honor Oct. 19. At a function in Waltham last night, Patrick dodged questions from the Herald as to whether he pressured Patrice Tierney to back out or if the Democratic Party now thinks of her as a liability. “I think it’s her decision and a totally understandable one,” Patrick said. “I don’t know the whole story, but it sounds like a very, very...

GOP gubernatorial challenger Charles D. Baker is gaining steam in the hotly contested three-way race, coming within a seven-point striking distance of Gov. Deval Patrick in the most recent Rasmussen Reports poll. Patrick still has the lead at 41 percent of the voters polled, but he’s dropped from the 45 percent support he got last month. Baker has climbed to 34 percent - up from 31 percent last month - while State Treasurer Tim Cahill’s support has remained flat at 16 percent.

Muslim leaders in Massachusetts fired back Friday at gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill, who they accused of making "bigoted" statements after Gov. Deval Patrick met with members of the Muslim community. In a statement, a coalition of Muslim leaders called Cahill’s remarks "bigoted ... undignified" and "anti-democratic," and said the governor has a right to meet with members of all religious backgrounds. Last weekend, Patrick met with around 1,000 Massachusetts Muslim leaders who wanted to raise awareness about their faith and become more civically engaged.

‘Is Tim Cahill the real deal?” That’s the question I started getting asked last week after the Massachusetts treasurer, who is running for governor as an independent, launched his high-profile attack on our local version of Obamacare. “If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health-insurance reform here in Massachusetts on a national level,” Cahill declared, “they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years.” It was enough to make a tea-partier shake his pitchfork with joy. Which was the point. By the most important measure — the $3 million sitting in his campaign...

While Martha Coakley’s campaign teeters on the brink of becoming the biggest political implosion since that of her predecessor, Tom Reilly, there’s another Bay State Democrat who’s watching the Scott Brown freight train in a state of terror: Gov. Deval Patrick. Patrick insiders say the governor’s campaign people are horrified by Brown’s surge, considering that Patrick is facing a candidate eerily similar to Brown in Republican health-care honcho Charlie Baker, not to mention a well-funded moderate Democrat in independent candidate Treasurer Tim Cahill.

A new poll from Suffolk University and the decision by two noted pollsters to declare the race a toss-up provide more evidence that voters in the Bay State could do the unthinkable next Tuesday: fill the senate seat held for almost 47 years by Ted Kennedy with a Republican. If that happens, it will be a bit of cosmic justice exacted on the state's Democrats. Not once, but twice, they changed the Massachusetts law on filling Senate vacancies to maintain their hold on power. ...Coakley's problems. She hasn't helped herself with a bad debate performance this week and a clumsy...

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown is blasting Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration for calling the National Guard to check whether Brown’s enrollment takes him out of the heated race to replace the late Edward M. Kennedy.

Hey, Deval, if you thought your recent poll numbers have been abysmal - and they have been - wait until after this latest pool-closing fiasco. You’ll be . . . drowning. Do you know what the governor calls a Herald plane hovering over his sparkling pool and cabana on his $1.7 million estate in Richmond on the second-hottest day of the year? “Every rich man’s nightmare.” The name of Deval’s Berkshires retreat, by the way, is Sweet P Farm. Now we know what the P stands for - pool. Talk about tone deaf - firing Dan Grabauskas, not firing Jim...

State Treasurer Tim Cahill this week will change his political party designation from Democrat to unenrolled, the first step in mounting an independent challenge to Democratic governor Deval Patrick in the 2010 general election, two advisers said today. Cahill, a lifelong Democrat who has served as treasurer since 2003, would not comment on his plans, but campaign advisers said he will make the switch at Quincy City Hall sometime this week. They said the move doesn't necessarily mean he will run against the sitting governor; he has told them he will either campaign for governor or treasurer as an independent...

Bay State Gov. Deval Patrick blasted WTKK yakker Jay Severin on his own radio station today, calling his remarks about Mexicans “way over the line” - and said he was “embarrassed” to be associated with the Hub station. Patrick - who skewered Severin during his monthly segment on Jim Braude and Margery Eagan’s WTKK-FM (96.9) show - said he was “disappointed” that the station let the right-wing host back on the air this week. “I found Jay Severin’s comments on the air about Mexicans hateful and hurtful, really just way over the line and I was just as disappointed, frankly,...

Gov. Deval Patrick has stashed four staffers in big-bucks jobs at several of the quasi-public agencies he is now vowing to reform - including one post worth a jaw-dropping $190,000 a year, the Herald has learned. Patrick ordered up a probe of salaries at quasi-public agencies last week as taxpayer outrage peaked over his tapping of Sen. Marian Walsh for a long-vacant $175,000-a-year post with the Massachusetts Health and Educational Facilities Authority. But four Patrick administration staffers have landed at quasi-public agencies:

[“Uncle, uncle,” - Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick] Why are you crying “Uncle,” Gov. Patrick? It’s the taxpayers who are getting the wedgie. So a reporter asks you about your bone-headed comment about make-work jobs for your feel-good friends and you say “uncle.” But last I checked, we taxpayers are still on the hook for Carol Aloisi’s salary. And while paying Sen. Marian Walsh $120,000 is better than paying her $175,000, the fact remains that when you took office, Governor, the assistant executive director of the Health and Education Facilities Authority was costing us zero. So you get away with keeping...

One of Barack Obama's closest political allies and one of John McCain's will share duties at a dinner Monday night Obama is hosting to honor McCain, whom he vanquished in the November election.

Howie thread beginning with his Sunday Herald column

Despite a slumping economy and looming budget crunch, Gov. Deval Patrick has hiked his office budget by an astonishing 80 percent, adding questionable new staff positions like “director of grassroots governance” and pumping millions into an extravagant “civic engagement” program. “We know the governor had a goal of creating 100,000 new jobs in his first term, we just didn’t know he was going to create them all in the Corner Office,” said Sen. Michael Knapik (R-Westfield). Added State Sen. Scott Brown (R-Wrentham): “People in my district are asking, ‘What is this guy doing?’ They get 1 to 2 percent increases...

Governor Deval Patrick has decided against taking action to allow illegal immigrants to pay resident tuition and fees at state colleges and universities this fall, an administration official said yesterday, crushing advocates who were counting on the governor to deliver on a pledge to support the students. Earlier this year, Patrick said he was considering ways to offer illegal immigrants in-state rates, such as issuing a regulation, adding that it would be "the right thing to do." The governor declined to comment yesterday, but an administration source who spoke on condition of anonymity said Patrick decided that there were "significant...

DARTMOUTH, Mass. -- A new gambling study shows some Massachusetts residents who have not supported casinos in the past may be changing their minds. "Fifty-seven percent of Massachusetts residents still favor two or more resort casinos in the state of Massachusetts. That number is actually four percent higher than when we last did this poll in September," said Dr. Clyde Barrow, a public policy analyst at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. The study was funded by a real estate development firm with land interests in the proposed Palmer and New Bedford casino sites. The research showed that as the state's deficit...

Governor Deval Patrick isn't merely penning his memoirs. The book proposal he submitted to publishers reads like the roadmap for a self-help manual, one in which he will celebrate optimism, rail against cynicism, and seek to inspire a nation with his own life story. The 65-page pitch letter that led to his $1.35 million advance last week from a Random House imprint reveals, in its overflowing optimism and aggressive marketing plan, just how high the freshman governor is aiming when the book is published in 2010. It details a strategy to sell at least 150,000 copies through a "vigorous media...

How many times have I told you? With Deval, it’s all about showing him the money. Originality is not his strong suit; he follows in the footsteps of others. Jesse Jackson makes a fortune in the racket Tom Wolfe called “steam control,” and Deval shakes down Coke and Texaco. But when you’re building a $7 million mansion in the Berkshires with a nut of maybe $30,000 a month, it doesn’t matter how big your “severance packages” were, you always need more dough. So now Deval mimics Barack Obama. He finds some new marks and scores a $1.35 million advance for...