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A quartet of controversial judicial picks by Gov. Deval Patrick — including the wife of a deep-pocketed state representative — have escalated infighting on the Governor’s Council as some members say nominees are being rushed through before a pair of lame ducks leaves office. Councilors Mary-Ellen Manning and Marilyn Devaney also are criticizing Patrick’s nomination this week of state Rep. Garrett Bradley’s wife, Heather, a Plymouth County prosecutor. Bradley (D-Hingham) gave Patrick a maximum $500 donation in March and has donated more than $36,000 to the state Democratic Party since 2006, records show. He’s also given more than $130,000 to...

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick on Tuesday vowed to adopt the rest of an advisory panel’s immigration reform recommendations, including pushing for in-state tuition for illegal immigrant students at state colleges, during his second term. The Democratic governor made the announcement to cheers at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition’s annual Thanksgiving luncheon. The group’s executive director served as co-chair of the advisory panel that made the recommendations. “Now, as we stand on the threshold of another four years, I want to commit to you that we will implement this report in its entirety, working with you, over the next...

Gov. Deval Patrick says he’ll use his second term to try to implement the rest of an advisory panel’s recent recommendations on immigration reform, including in-state tuition for illegal immigrant students and more English classes. Patrick told immigrant advocates Tuesday that the moves will help better integrate the state’s immigrant population, seventh largest in the country. Last year, an advisory panel released a report on possible Massachusetts immigration reforms, and advocates have been pressing Patrick to push for dozens of recommendations in the report.

<p>BOSTON (AP) — U.S. defense contractor Raytheon announced a series of layoffs Tuesday just days after Gov. Deval Patrick denied asking it to delay terminations until after the state elections.</p> <p>The announcement follows three other rounds of layoffs announced by Massachusetts employers in the immediate aftermath of last week's elections.</p>

BOSTON—The Raytheon Co. is laying off employees just days after Gov. Deval Patrick denied asking the company to delay terminations until after the state elections. The Associated Press asked Patrick three days before the election if he'd heard about pending layoffs at Raytheon. He said it was just a rumor. He bristled when asked if he requested Raytheon delay any terminations, saying the company was adding jobs.

The Massachusetts secretary of state is reporting that turnout is heaviest in the suburbs — exactly where Republicans need it to be if Charlie Baker is going to upset Deval Patrick in the governor’s race. If there’s such a thing as a Republican enclave in Massachusetts, it’s the South Shore area, and one South Shore town already had 25 percent turnout before noon. Also, a local PBS reporter appearing on my radio station this morning said that the voters she talked to in a downtown Boston precinct were breaking two-to-one for Charlie Baker. Meanwhile, Barney Frank and his partner were...

Call this good news/bad news for Barney Frank in his fight to hold onto his job in Massachusetts’ 4th CD. The Boston Globe reports that Frank has a 13-point lead — but only gets 46% of the vote in a two-way race, 46-33. With a week to go before voting, Frank’s inability to get a majority may reveal a serious problem, and the Globe notes that enthusiasm may be that problem (via Jim Geraghty): US Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Newton, leads his Republican challenger, Sean Bielat, by 13 percentage points among likely voters in the Fourth Congressional District. In...

A new Boston Globe poll puts Barney Frank ahead of his GOP challenger, Sean Bielat, by a 46 to 33 percent margin. That may sound like good news for the incumbent, until you consider that Frank, who was first elected in 1980, has never won a general election by fewer than 20 points -- and that he's notched at least 64 percent of the vote in every race since 1990. It's not hard to see what's going on here. As I wrote back in January, when Scott Brown knocked off Martha Coakley, Massachusetts is a perfect example of how the...

MELROSE — With New Jersey Governor Christopher J. Christie offering a blueprint for GOP victory, Republican Charles D. Baker brought 800 chanting supporters to their feet yesterday as he promised to replicate Christie’s victories in Massachusetts. In one of Baker’s most energetic events to date, Christie regaled the crowd at Melrose City Memorial Hall with stories of his election win over an incumbent in a three-way race last year and the confrontations with the Legislature over taxes and spending that followed, recounting it all with the gusto and bravado of a storyteller at a tavern. He playfully threatened to “go...

Two men standing behind President Obama at a campaign rally for Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA) are wearing a shirt with his face on it.

Barack Obama the vigorous campaigner showed up at a rally for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick in Boston on Saturday...

John Kerry fires at GOP Senate nominees By: Carol E. Lee October 16, 2010 03:49 PM EDT BOSTON – Sen. John Kerry took shots Saturday at Republican candidates up and down the November ballot, including a dig at Delaware Senate hopeful Christine O’Donnell’s admitted dabbling in witchcraft. “You’ve got what’s her name, Christine O’Donnell, in Delaware,” Kerry said, speaking at a rally for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. O’Donnell, he said, “wants to take away health care." “I think she thinks she’s going to wave her wand and it will all disappear,” Kerry quipped, “but this is real folks.” Kerry’s efforts...

BOSTON—President Barack Obama was trying to help Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick win re-election on Saturday, but more important to his own political future, maintain a Democratic Senate. After a Patrick rally at the Hynes Convention Center, the president was traveling to West Newton for a fundraiser at the home of Caritas Cristi CEO Ralph de la Torre. The event was expected to raise $500,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It is charged with electing party members to the U.S. Senate. Obama wants to maintain a Democratic Senate to pass the remainder of his first-term agenda. Both it and a...

Amid the maelstrom of controversy over the nation’s first offshore wind farm, one truth is as plain as the proposed 440-foot turbines in Nantucket Sound are tall: Its energy will be very expensive. That’s not just compared with power from coal and natural gas, but with renewable power from other sources. Once the 130 turbines begin rotating, the energy produced will cost up to 50 percent more than energy today from some land-based wind farms and twice as much as some hydroelectric dams. The cost will increase customers’ monthly electric bills about 2 percent, and for many that is too...

A devastating Nov. 2 defeat could cost Gov. Deval Patrick more than his lofty position and promising political career - it could scuttle the happily-ever-after ending to his million-dollar “inspirational” memoir and turn it into a bookstore bomb, experts said. “It would be a horrendous event,” said Hub book agent and attorney John Taylor “Ike” Williams. “The publisher would have a hard time with that book.” The success of Patrick’s 200-page autobiography - titled “A Reason to Believe: Lessons from an Improbable Life” and priced at $21.99 - hinges largely on the governor raising his national profile. That’s a far-fetched...

Taking a rare hard-nosed stance on immigration, Gov. Deval Patrick scolded the illegal alien aunt of his close political ally President Obama, saying she’s not “entitled” to anything but human decency. “I heard that at one point she said she was entitled to become a citizen and I don’t think that that’s the case - with all due respect - I just don’t think that people who are here illegally are entitled to anything other than the respect you would give another living soul,” Patrick told the Herald. In the one-on-one interview - the first of four State House Insight...

With just five weeks to the election, Republican Charles D. Baker has pulled even with Governor Deval Patrick in a gubernatorial race shaped by anti-incumbent sentiment and unusually high excitement among Republican voters, according to a new Boston Globe poll. The poll results also suggest that independent Timothy P. Cahill is pulling voters equally from Baker and Patrick, raising questions about the conventional political thinking that his candidacy is undercutting Baker’s chance to defeat the governor in the Nov. 2 election. In the Globe poll, taken last week, Patrick, a Democrat, won support from 35 percent of likely voters, compared...

Chicks dig Gov. Deval Patrick, a new Suffolk University/7News poll shows. This gender gap is oh-so-sweet if you’re the Democratic incumbent from Milton, with a full 43 percent of women supporting Patrick - compared to just 31 percent giving the nod to the GOP’s Charlie Baker, Patrick’s main rival.

Mass Gov. Deval Patrick : “I see some pretty coarse signs.”

After repeatedly dodging the issue, Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday pledged to implement a state sales-tax rollback if ballot Question 3 is approved by voters in November. “I will respect the will of the voters,” Patrick told the Herald at a late afternoon campaign stop, after twice refusing to answer the question hours earlier. “But I think any responsible candidate and any responsible public official has got to be straight with people about what a calamity this will create in their lives.” Patrick’s promise to set up the framework to slash the sales tax from 6.25 percent to 3 percent if...