As many have been predicting here for the past few weeks, John Olver today endorsed Deval Patrick in the Governor’s race.
âDeval Patrick has shown a commitment to revitalizing Massachusettsâ cities and towns through support of education and the economy,â Olver said. âIt is clear in his efforts to reach out to communities in the Central and Western parts of Massachusetts that Deval Patrick is a leader for the entire state.â
The full press release is available on the Patrick web site.
This is Patrick’s fifth congressional endorsement as Olver joins Capuano, Frank, McGovern and Tierney. Patrick now has half of our congressmen in his corner. Not bad going in to the convention.
As I understand Meehan and Neal have endorsed Reilly. I do no know of any congressional endorsements for Gabrielli.
Also of note Barack Obama will be in town today supporting Deval Patrick at a fundraiser/pre-convention rally.
First, he got arrested for protesting, then he made a big speech on global warming on the house floor, now he’s endorsing Deval Patrick. Olver’s really getting down with his Happy Valley roots!
The global warming speech was nothing new, Olver has been the House sponsor of the McCain-Lieberman Climate Ctewardship Act from its inception.
In his life before politics, Olver was a professor of chemistry at UMass. He’s presumably still in touch with the UMass geosciences department, which is full of important climate scientists like Ray Bradley.
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I’d conjecture Olver likes Cape Wind — we had a big wind turbine on campus for many years and still have a very strong wind energy lab.
I think that the past few endorsements tells us that the AmeriQuest and stock issues are pretty much non-issues for most voters. Frank, Tierney and Olver all endorsed Patrick after the whole Ameriquest flap, and Olver after Patrick released how much he earned. I don’t think any politician — no matter how progressive — would associate themselves with somebody they thought were about to enter a scandal. More importantly, they’re not going to stray from public opinion in their districts too far.