Deval on his Business Record

I have spent my entire professional life pursuing a commitment to fundamental fairness. Whether it was fighting for poor tenants as head of the Legal Aid Bureau in law school, defending people on death row or advocating for basic voting rights as a staff lawyer at the Legal Defense Fund, resolving business disputes and employment issues for small and large companies in private practice, or enforcing federal law as head of the Civil Rights Division in the Clinton administration, I have always approached my work as a mission for basic fairness.

That for me is a matter of conscience. And whether in public or private life, I have never checked my conscience at the door.

My work inside the business world is no exception. As head of the independent task force and later as general counsel at Texaco, I helped reform the company’s practices to end unfairness against women and minorities in hiring and promotions.  I also pushed the company to stop its assault on the science of climate change, and helped to consummate the multi-billion dollar merger with Chevron.

As general counsel at Coca-Cola, I worked again to improve workplace fairness, and also to resolve a continent-wide antitrust investigation in Europe and a wide-ranging investigation into accounting issues in the United States, to expand the health plan in Africa to include anti-retroviral drug treatment for workers and their families, and to develop the first-ever public commitments to respect the right to organize, to bargain in good faith, and to limit sugar soft drinks in schools.

Thanks to a paid public relations consultant from New York, you may have heard about charges by bottling plant workers in Colombia about violence in their plant years ago. The tactics of this consultant and his links to rival campaigns are questionable and, following complaints from several labor unions, he is now under investigation by state campaign finance authorities. But on the substance I want you to know directly from me that I took the Colombian workers’ charges seriously, investigated them thoroughly – and found no evidence that the company colluded with anyone to incite or direct that violence. I still believe, given the seriousness of the charges, that the company should sponsor an independent investigation of the claims and make a public report, and I understand from recent news reports that the company is now doing just that.

My service as a board member of the parent company of Ameriquest is another favorite political topic for my opponents. But there again I was part of the solution. Before I arrived, Ameriquest was facing serious claims of predatory lending. I was brought onto that board to help fix those problems, and worked successfully there to achieve a national settlement and needed corporate reforms.

The point is this: I am proud of my work as a business executive and corporate board member. I have written, spoken and most importantly acted on behalf of corporate responsibility. I did some good and I learned a few things – some of which frankly have helped prepare me for the job of governing this Commonwealth.

I don’t want to be coy.  I was paid well.  And I earned it – by making the companies better, by advocating for more enlightened policies, by acting in whatever I did with integrity.  I didn’t achieve everything I wanted, but I had some measurable success.

Some of my opponents want you to think that a Democrat can’t stand for both economic expansion and economic justice. I don’t accept that and neither should you. Throughout this campaign I have told you that I do not believe that business is inherently evil.  For families and communities to flourish, we need good jobs, and for good jobs, we need strong, healthy businesses.  I respect and admire entrepreneurship, and believe we must expand economic opportunity.  As governor, I’ll use my business experience to do just that.

At the same time, I believe that economic justice ought to go hand in hand with economic expansion. We ought to expect of businesses, large and small, what we expect of each other: to be good, responsible citizens. That means fair work places, fair dealing with customers and vendors, fair treatment of the community and stewardship of the environment. That is what good corporate citizenship has always meant to me.

If you believe that good people can and must work inside companies as well as advocate from outside, that we must both build the economy and make it more fair, and that a healthy respect for and experience in both worlds is an asset to governing our Commonwealth, then I am your guy and I want your help.

But be prepared: the better we do, the more negative attacks, distortions, dirty tricks and excessive spending we’re likely to see.  All of these tactics are the steady diet of the very politics-as-usual we’re fighting so hard to change. To change that type of politics, we are going to have to defeat those types of tactics.

But together we can. Stay focused and positive. We’ve already defied conventional thinking by creating a movement for change in Massachusetts that is sturdier and more determined than the political insiders ever imagined was possible.

Because it’s hard to stop change whose time has come.

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