Alum Proposes New Solutions for Mass.

Deval L. Patrick ’78, one of three Democratic nominees for governor, called for community-building and improved health care before nearly a hundred students in Ticknor Lounge last night.

“There’s a profit bottom line, we get that. But there are community and environmental and human bottom lines,” Patrick said. “It is the role of the government to balance these bottom lines.”

Patrick also suggested longer school hours and after-school programs to strengthen primary education—a measure he said may lower gang violence as well.

While Patrick criticized Governor W. Mitt Romney’s leadership as “cynical,” he stressed the need for Democrats to propose better solutions.

“Discontent with Republicans is not going to be enough to assure democratic victory and it shouldn’t be,” he said. “We have to offer to replace bad and weak leadership with creative leadership and vision.”

Patrick, who was the former assistant attorney general for civil rights, also argued that his personal and professional background had prepared him to run for governor.

“In my case, vision comes from my cores—from my life and my professional experience,” he said.

Patrick, who grew up in the South Side of Chicago—an underprivileged area—said that the sense of community there provided the support he needed while growing up.

At the age of 14, Patrick attended Milton Academy on a scholarship, before being admitted to Harvard in 1974.

In a Crimson interview before his speech, Patrick, a former English concentrator in Dunster House, called his Harvard years a “chapter in a lesson book,” exposing him to a broad range of people and ideas.

Patrick also said that campaigning for governor had given him the chance to reconnect with some of his Harvard classmates.

He said that he recently found his former freshman-year roommate from Iowa, whom he hadn’t seen in over twenty years, living in Newton.

The former roommate has now become an active member of Patrick’s campaign, he said.

Patrick also graduated from Harvard Law School in 1982.

In the question-and-answer session after the speech, several Massachusetts students asked the candidate about issues including health care, taxes and gang violence.

Patrick said that he does not support lowering the flat tax by 0.3 percent to 5 percent because it is “fiscally irresponsible.”

The event was organized by Harvard Students for Deval Patrick, in affiliation with the Harvard College Democrats.

“As a former Harvard student, he shares—and shared when he was a student—a lot of the same drives, a lot of the same decisions in his life that a lot of students do,” said Daniel J. Sachs ’07, the press secretary of Harvard Students for Deval Patrick.

Patrick will contend against Thomas Reilly, the state attorney general, and Chris Gabrieli for the Democratic nomination.

If elected next November, Patrick would be the state’s first black governor.

—Staff writer Claire M. Guehenno can be reached at guehenno@fas.harvard.edu.