Frank Phillips reported in the Boston Globe:
One of Patrick’s most immediate problems is that the casino initiative alienated a good chunk of his political base, particularly the progressive Democratic coalition that was at the core of his landslide election in 2006.
“I am saddened that he has greatly disillusioned his political base,” said state Representative Jay Kaufman, a Lexington Democrat and early Patrick supporter who voted against the casino plan.
Indeed. Candidate Patrick urged us to a higher standard of discourse. He called on us to become more deeply involved not only in politics but in the process of governance. He called for greater transparency in government and broad civic engagement. He said he would set a higher standard and restore trust in government. But he delivered none of this in his casino gambling gambit. Instead, he fronted for a disreputable “industry;” using data derived almost soley from gambling interests, and those financed by gambling interests. He developed his plan with none of the transparency or civic engagement we expected from candidate Patrick.
I think Candidate Patrick needs to have a heart-to-heart talk with Governor Patrick. I think they have much to say to each other.
“I will never understand why Governor Patrick blew so much political capital and public good will in making the three casinos the central feature of his economic plan.”
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p>Maybe central to enhancing the State’s collection of revenue in the short term, but certainly not economic development if that is what you mean.
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p>The more likely features of economic development are his commitment to Life Sciences and expedited permitting. I think casinos was his attempt to follow through on his property tax relief promise, one that is badly suffering right now.
helping the cities and towns would provide more, and more persistent, economic-development bang for buck than a package of subsidies and tax breaks, for life sciences or anything. However well crafted.
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p>More than anything else, employers who offer good jobs want to locate where people want to live. Infrastructures of all kinds in good shape, easy to get around, good schools, safe streets, pleasant neighborhoods.
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p>These are all achieved, or not, by 351 cities and towns, with the help (or not) from the state.
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p>I don’t really feel qualified to assess high-profile efforts like the life-sciences bill, but my gut says we are going for the sexy stuff over the nuts and bolts.
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p>Well said ………..
….previous post on how you deal with economic clusters around the Commonwealth (using an example I know of) to strengthen economies at the street level and not at the Beacon Hill elevation , though there is much they could do to support this. It all adds up to sustainable tax bases and jobs, but not a concentration of jobs in one industry or one geographic area.
Sweeping grandiose proposals from the corner office on Beacon Hill will amount ot nothing. Communities, towns, and cities, must accept more responsibility for the impetus for progress and the state providing some direction.
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p>As I see it, the nergy and drive is there, we just have a dearth of leaders and the captain of the ship went on shore leave.
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p>Deval Patrick has been less than productive. It’s now becoming an embarrassment.
more good stuff from a short post……………
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p>I know some folks working hard to find some specific solutions that might help us grow healthier communities. Of course, most of them would require addtional state dollars which means eith deep cuts in other state supported programs or addtional revenues.
than the casino proposal. The investment in each casino was projected at about a billion dollars — each. And that is just the construction costs. Patrick claims that these institutions, (if we may call them that) would result in 20,000 permanent jobs — and he is now jabbing at DiMasi to come up with something that would deliver that many jobs.
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p>The casino investments dwarf his very worthy life sciences initititive which promises one billion over ten years.
Casinos are indeed the central feature of the governor’s economic plan.
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p>Patrick has proposed nothing else on this scale, and seems unlikely to. Especially now that he is challenging the speaker to come up with his own plan. Evidently, the guv has no plan B. At least, to borrow a term from the “gaming industry” he has yet to show his hand.
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The lege stuffed that, too. Except now they’ve let most of it through in various forms while the media was all focused on the casino. So maybe the casinos were a red herring all along?
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p>And when a republican is running against him on libertarian grounds in 2010, he’ll be able to point to the casino and say, hey, I am for any means necessary to balance the budget and create economic freedom in the state. That’ll take a lot of the edge off of the “tax and spend liberal” argument. It creates space between him and the lege and blunts the “one party rule” argument.
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p>Given that the casino thing was obviously doomed at least 2 months ago, one wonders why he kept pushing on it… unless pushing and losing on this deal was his political goal. I’m just speculating here.. just can’t see why he would have pushed it until failure unless he saw an upside to doing so. Assigns blame for budget shortfalls to the house because he can point to mystical casino revenues that they didn’t let him create? Maybe that’ll help with some accountability over there and we can stop running 500M dollar deficits.
I’m not sure why you (and many others) see the casino issue as Patrick blowing his political capital and alienating his political base. Even among those who disagree with the casino plan (the vast majority on this site, anyway) this should at least be seen as a well-intentioned (even if ill-concieved) plan to create jobs and raise revenue, which is a huge problem for the commonwealth right now.
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p>At the very least, hopefully the failed casino proposal spurs conversation to center around how to realistically create jobs and raise revenues in Massachusetts, including (maybe especially) amongst those who zealously and single-mindedly targeted the casino plan for defeat.
But the good thing about political capital is that it is not too hard to build it up again. All he needs to do is reconnect with his base and the general public. Now that casino’s are gone he needs to hit the street again with some good initiatives. People are fickle and will soon forget past mistakes but not if they think that he belives he’s beat.
Frederick, you may be in a better position to know this than myself, but I recall that Patrick the candidate was notoriously noncommittal on casinos before the election. I recall him saying, if anything, that he was open to be persuaded by both sides.
If anyone’s got a direct quote from Patrick that he was anti-casino as a candidate, I’d like to see it. I’ve looked hard and can’t find anything.
“I have more homework to do on this.”
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p>(David, I’m sorry I don’t know of a link, but this was said frequently in my presense.)
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p>He promised the same kind of effort he engaged in regarding Cape Wind. On Cape Wind you may recall, “I was determined to speak with both sides. It turns out there are something like five sides. I spoke to all of them and to experts independent of any side.”
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p>The results on Cape Wind: “It was not an easy decision, but ON BALANCE I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages and that’s why I support it.”
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p>I imagine that the results of that effort made sense to many on this site even though the same process on casinos yielded a less popular (at least here) decision.
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p>A few more Patrick quotes you might find relevant.
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p>”We won’t agree on everything but I don’t believe we need to agree on everything to work together on anything.”
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p>Thanks for begining this discussion in that spirit.
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p>Oh – and one more: “We won’t accomplish all of this by the end of my SECOND term, but we need to get started.”
I think Patrick’s mind was made up as soon as he took office, or at least he was leaning strongly toward casinos. Remember when it was announced that Bosley would be Patrick’s new economic development czar… for like three days before Bosley changed his mind? There was a fair amount of speculation at the time that this was because Patrick said he wanted Bosley to work on casino issues.
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p>As a caveat: I have absolutely no proof, inside information or anything.
I was present at the early Dem primay debate between Reilly, Gabrielli and Patrick at Agawam Jr. High School. Reilly was for ’em, Gab was open; Patrick was opposed, and specifically said that he worries about people playing who can’t afford to lose.
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p>This Boston Globe article says that candidate Patrick was opposed to casinos.
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p>It is true that candidate Patrick talked alot about stem cell and other bio research and alternative energy — and said little about casinos. But when he did, he was opposed.
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p>I invite anyone to offer any evidence to the contrary.
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p>The main point is this: After promising to be transparent and engage us in conversation about important directions for the state, he turned opaque on this subject. Instead of leading the conversation from the outset, now he is whining that the legislature didn’t have enough of a conversation and that is why his dubious proposal lost. I submit he has no one to blame but himself.
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p>I think candidate Patrick would own up to it and move on. I hold out hope that candidate Patrick will show up to have a talk with the Governor.
and recall that Deval spoke about being opposed for many of the same reasons that anti-casino people have expressed on BMG.
I agreed with the person who wrote an anti-Casino editorial in yesterday’s Boston Globe, who said that if anyone doubts the consequences of more casinos in the Bay State, one need only go down and check out Atlantic City. It’s true.
Here’s a link:
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p>http://www.boston.com/bostongl…