Stop the presses..Deval is stinking rotten rich. He also has lots of mortgages.
Is he solvent?
Patrick’s mortgages amount to $5.9m
Candidate says he has what it takes to run
By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff | March 8, 2006With the Democratic primary heating up, Deval Patrick has stressed that he will have the funds to wage a credible campaign in what is expected to be the state’s most expensive gubernatorial election ever.
Patrick is assuring supporters he has the personal assets to compete, as he takes on an incumbent attorney general with a bulging campaign account, and possibly a deep-pocketed venture capitalist.
The Mortgages
But he also has accumulated significant debt.
Patrick has heavily mortgaged his family’s real estate. He and his wife are now carrying mortgages worth a total of $5.9 million on their Milton home and a Berkshires vacation home. Based on the interest rates of the loans, which the Globe reviewed, the Patricks’ mortgage payments are roughly $27,000 per month.
More Mortgages
But a Globe examination of public records — including real estate holdings, mortgages, personal loans, and federal financial reports — reveals this picture: Patrick, a Harvard-educated lawyer who grew up poor on Chicago’s South Side, has seen his income soar over the last 20 years. But during that same period, he has also embraced financial risk, taking on significant debt.
There are no allegations that Patrick did anything improper. In fact, in a rising housing market, borrowing heavily to buy real estate with the expectation of appreciation can be a successful financial strategy.Since 1989, when Patrick and his wife, Diane, first purchased their Milton house for $560,000, they have taken out 10 mortgages on the property, sometimes carrying three at the same time. They are currently carrying two mortgages worth $1.65 million on the house. The town recently assessed it at $1.8 million.
And, more mortgages
On a 77-acre tract of land in the Berkshires, where they are building a 10,000-square-foot house, the Patricks have a $4 million mortgage that they took out in January from Berkshire Bank in Pittsfield. They also have a $620,000 mortgage that they took out last year to buy a 14-acre adjacent lot, which an aide to Patrick said the couple intends to sell.
The current assessed value for the two Berkshire lots is $1.1 million. The building permit for the house, filed with the Richmond town hall, estimates it will cost $2.5 million to build. Richmond Tax Assessor Craig Swinson said that property assessments lag market value in the town.
and…more mortgages
Patrick and his wife were also heavily mortgaged on a condominium they purchased in Atlanta in 2001, when he was working at Coca-Cola corporate headquarters there. They bought the condo for $755,000, and received a mortgage from Sun Trust Bank for $735,000, or 97 percent of the purchase price. The condo is now under agreement to be sold, said Kahlil Byrd, an aide to Deval Patrick.
The Patricks have always met their obligations, public records show, with the exception of a period in 1996, when Patrick was assistant US attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division in Washington. That year, a tax lien was placed on the Patricks’ Milton home after they failed to make payments on $8,778 in back taxes they owed to the IRS.
19 mortgages
While the 19 mortgages and personal loans the Patricks have taken out since 1989 are recorded publicly, the couple’s income and assets are more difficult to determine.
In 1994, when Patrick was nominated to be an assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration, he filed a federal financial disclosure report, listing the couple’s net worth at $201,000, with assets worth $1,034,000, including their Milton house, which they valued at $750,000.
Mega salary at Coca Cola
According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Patrick appears to have had high earnings during the years he served as general counsel at Coke. His salary at Coca-Cola began at $1.5 million in 2001 and increased to $2 million in his final year, 2004. He also received a $2.1 million in severance pay in 2005 shortly after he left Coca-Cola.
$2.1 mill in severance, $10 to $20 million in stock optionsThe SEC documents from that four-year period also reveal that Patrick accumulated about $2 million in stock from Coca-Cola and by sitting on the boards of directors at Reebok International Ltd. and United Airlines Corporation. Stories in trade journals, including the Atlanta Business Chronicle and Legal Times, reported that when he left Coca-Cola, in addition to the $2.1 million in severance pay, he had between $10 million and $20 million in Coca-Cola stock options.
Ameriquest..Not his best choice..preditory lending
The privately held lending firm earlier this year entered into a $325 million settlement with 49 states to settle allegations of predatory lending practices. Patrick, who has been on the board since 2004, declined to detail what compensation he has received from Ameriquest, saying only that it is more than $100,000 a year.
http://www.boston.com/news/loc…
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
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p>Patrick does not, however, consider earning $1,750,000 per year “middle class”.
I admit it would be nice to have a UMASS educated candidate who had not spent decades being treated like a demi-god running. But we don’t, now do we?
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p>To me the statement that 1.75 million a year is a hardship is so out of touch as to be scary. They guy probably thinks everyone gets pensions and lifelong health insurance, too.
This reminds me of The Onion’s brilliant take on John Kerry crossing the country in an effort to shake hands with the common man… on his whistle-stop yacht tour of America.
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p>Or the idea that Congress is made up of over 44% millionaires, yet they can relate to the concerns of their constituents.
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p>Or John Edwards’ Two Americas rhetoric while getting $400 haircuts.
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p>Deval Patrick might pretend to be a “man of the people”, but that’s a pretty nauseating roster of riches to listen to for someone who’s happy to give hundreds of millions of our taxpayer dollars to corporate titans. Or to be collecting money from Ameriquest — over a hundred thousand dollars year even after working there — off the backs of the people Ameriquest screwed over with predatory loans.
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p>Charlie Baker can claim all he wants to stand for the people or for tax cuts, but he was raking in millions as healthcare became increasingly unaffordable for the people of Massachusetts. And his role in structuring Big Dig debt to explode in our faces is unforgivable.
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p>We deserve much better than either of these pretenders. I’d much rather have someone like Grace Ross or Jill Stein as my governor, who perhaps have some privilege, but have basically devoted their lives to fighting for social, economic and environmental justice.
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p>And since Jill Stein is running to build an alternative political party that is completely independent from corporate money and lobbyists, she’s got my enthusiastic support. We desperately need new institutions and a new kind of politics, whose grassroots efforts don’t close shop once its candidate has won office, and then get reinvigorated for the next campaign.
to be a “man of the people?”
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p>Link please.
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p>Maybe, though I think the Governor has done a damn fine job managing our finances while under the worst recession this country has ever seen since the Great Depression. The work his administration has put into mitigating the pain as much as possible is something we’ve never seen in the 16 years of Republican leadership before. It’s why this state is faring better than most right now.
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p>Of course, you have every right to support Ross or Stein — and if you would like to see a Grace Ross, I encourage you to support and volunteer for her campaign. She’s running in the primary right now and, while I don’t support her candidacy, I think there’s at least some value in having the contest. However, I warn you that a vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Tim Cahill or Charley Baker — and if you don’t think there’s a big difference between Cahill and Baker vs. Deval Patrick, you clearly haven’t been paying enough attention.
This lame “hit piece” is about four years too late.
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p>Oh wait, no, most of this was discussed in ’06.
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p>I find it damned ironic that the same people who defend wealthy white Republican candidates from those of us who say they are out of touch (like making fun of those who say $1.8M == Middle Class), are the same ones who want to tear down a guy who came from poverty to succeed through his academic outstandingness, and of course whose success was after years of working hard for the public in various jobs that didn’t pay anything close to $1M.
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p>Just sayin’.
Wealth is not the issue. Johnny seems to be missing the point entirely with Baker. He reads the post about Charlie Baker and his BS middle class stories, and doesn’t accept that Baker was getting called out on BS. Instead his eye glaze over and his only comeback is that Patrick has wealth. What that has to do with Baker saying something very dumb is beyond me, and probably beyond Johnny as well.
In fact, the article cited dates from 2006.
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p>I wasn’t aware that Deval Patrick was running so much debt, though. Not unreasonable, either, to have some concern about that. Even if this is introduced in a neener-neener, point-missing fashion, I can understand that concern.
Is the Governor “stinking rich” or is he ‘in over his head’ with all the mortgages? This years-and-years-and-years old news is very confusing to me. He either has a lot of money, or he’s barely solvent. Why don’t you pick one, instead of undermining your entire argument before a single, solitary reply has been written.
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p>Actually, check that, it would be confusing to me if I actually gave a damn about his personal finances, or your post. Why don’t you go have fun at Red Mass Group. IOKALAYAR, so they’ll love a rabid post over Patrick’s finances that glosses over Baker’s riches.