Can someone help me out here. How did Deval Patrick and Barrack Obama first meet? According to my local paper, the Gloucester Daily Times, they were old friends from their Chicago days. When I sent the reporter a note saying the timelines didn’t seem to support that, the next story involving the two of them claimed they were friends from Harvard Law School. The timelines don’t appear to be consistent with that claim either, something I also pointed out to the reporter and his editor, but the claim has appeared again in a story this week.
Why is this of local interest? Patrick reached out to an Obama aide, creating at least the appearance of a request for financial assistance for the fishing industry.
mollypat says
Hi Peter:
Patrick and Obama first met in Chicago in the early 1990s, at a time when Obama was a community organizer and Patrick, who grew up in a tough South Side neighborhood, was working in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton.
best,
Pat
peter-dolan says
Interesting. Wikipedia puts Obama in Chicago from 1985 – 1988 before he attended Harvard Law School (six years after Patrick graduated from there), and Patrick at the Justice Dept. from 1994 to 1997, roughly a decade later.
petr says
… which is probably a typo or a misprint as that was an earlier phase of his career. Wikipedia ALSO puts Obama in Chicago AFTER he attended Harvard. In the early nineties Obama did do stuff that could be considered “community organizing” (voter registration, etc) like that which he did prior to attending Harvard, but mostly he taught law at UChicago and practiced law with a firm called “Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland” which specializes in civil rights law. So it would be passing strange if a high-profile Chicago law firm specializing in civil rights cases DID NOT cross paths with Clintons Asst Atty Gen for Civil Right, the right Hon. Deval Patrick.
In 1996 Obama became a State Senator and the rest, as they say, is history…
peter-dolan says
I don’t think it’s a misprint, since you can the same information in his bio o the White House website. He was working in Chicago before he went to Harvard. I see your point, that he probably ended up meeting Patrick when Patrick was at the Justice Dept.
peter-dolan says
… you can find the same information …
petr says
… I’ve learned not to discount the (in)ability of journalists to get the story straight. I imagine that a question put to either Patrick or Obama such as “where did you meet the other?” might be answered as “we met in a professional capacity and quickly learned we shared some experiences such as Harvard” and very quickly becomes the “old friends from Harvard” that, as you point out, isn’t true.
Christopher says
You make it sound like something “fishy” (yes, I went there!) is going on between them. Why wouldn’t a Governor seek federal assistance through the President for an industry important to said Governor’s state? When and how they met the first time does not seem at all relevant to that.
peter-dolan says
f you read the story, the reporter seems to be trying to make the point that the Governor and President have a strong relationship, but despite that the Governor is not delivering for the local fishermen. He is using a claim that they were at Harvard Law School together to support that.
My issue is that the paper keeps printing statements that don’t seem to stand up to even cursory fact checking – and I’ve pointed it out twice in letters to the reporter and the editor.
I don’t think it’s strange that a governor would reach out on behalf of constituents. I just don’t know how seriously he pursued the matter.
kate says
I can’t claim to have been there the first time that Deval Patrick and Tim Murray met. If I am recalling correctly, the second time they met was at my house at the holiday party in 2005. And to my knowledge, the first picture of them together was taken at my house. I can’t imagine anyone caring but I figured I’d throw it out there.
jconway says
My first conversation with His Excellency took place outside of Jimmy Tingle’s theatre in Davis when he came to speak and answer questions circa 2006, before he won the primary. When I mentioned I was going to U Chicago in the fall he told me he grew up “on the other side of the Dan Ryan” from Hyde Park and “Milton Academy offered me a great ticket out and I’ve never looked back, but my friend Sen. Obama lives in Hyde Park and is going to do great things”.
I take that to mean he hadn’t lived in Chicago since he went to high school, but he definitely knew and respected Obama before he made it really big. I waved to Obama at the DNC in Boston but never saw him in Hyde Park, lot of other people I know have great recollections of him though. Nearly every area business has a signed autograph or an ‘Obama went here’ sign, and the Walgreens has an entire section of the store selling Obama chotchkey’s that almost looks like a shrine.
They have very similar backgrounds though, absent fathers, Harvard Law, great public speakers (I still say Deval is a better orator by the way, he speaks from the heart and delivers a powerful speech and knows how to improvise much better), and even Plouffe and Axelrod as campaign staff (I met Plouffe at an Arlington canvas). Their paths didn’t cross at Harvard Law though, an attorney I canvassed with in Arlington said that he went to law school with Deval and John Roberts but Obama came after they graduated.