Many congratulations to Deval Patrick and his campaign team for a job well done. Despite my personal support for Mihos, I do think that Patrick will be an excellent governor. Politics aside, he has all the characteristics of a great leader, and I think he’s sincere in his commitment to the betterment of the Commonwealth.

I was very glad to have the opportunity to observe the final hours of the race from the Mihos campaign’s election night party. It was a fascinating experience and, if nothing else, strengthened my confidence in Christy Mihos as a candidate. I hope he runs for office again, because he’ll have my vote again.

The party was a lot of fun, and it was a great place to be while watching the poll results come in. It’s difficult to say exactly what the mood was. Certainly everyone was excited and highly anticipating the results, but with what turned out to be very high voter turnout it didn’t take long for it to be pretty clear that things weren’t going to turn out quite the way we wanted. Unfortunately I haven’t yet been able to find any reports on what the voter turnout actually was, but certainly it was much higher than it seemed in my precinct. But when Mihos entered the room it was nothing but cheers, and Mihos’ concession speech was very gracious and complementary of his opponents and, especially, Deval Patrick. Sadly I didn’t get a chance to actually meet Mr. Mihos, but hopefully there will be other opportunities in the future.

As far as the actual election went, obviously my prediction was just a tad off. But I really do think that, had voter turnout been low, it would have shaped up more as I predicted. The results definitely seemed to support my take that the only people who voted for Healey were party-line Republican voters who voted for her for no reason other than that she ran on the Republican ticket. She could have sacrificed a baby on stage, and they still would have voted for her because she’s a Republican. Patrick obviously took not only the general Democratic vote, but the moderates and centrists as well. According to reports I’ve seen he took a large percentage of independent voters. I think general resentment towards the current administration, and a view of that administration as definitively Republican—both state and federal—is what really kicked his numbers to the levels they reached. Clearly I overestimated the amount of the backlash against the current administration that was leveled against the Democrats. I thought that they would be viewed as part of the problem to a much greater extent than it appears they were. I guess people just aren’t ready to shake that two-party mentality yet. Maybe some day. If we’re lucky.

I’ve just discovered thanks to Blue Mass Group that the Herald is reporting that we’re actually seeing pretty high turnout with 20% of Boston having already voted by noon. This may upset my prediction for Mass Guber ‘06 and spell trouble for Mihos.

On the other hand, it seems to me that the large voter turnout is going to be inspired by wide-spread disappointment with the status quo in American politics. I do think that it will definitely bring up the Mihos and Ross votes as many people are dissatisfied with the Republican leadership but don’t know if the Democrats will be any better (Kerry Healey did have a good point that it’s a good thing to have different parties in control of the Legislative and Executive branches). But, with Patrick’s high charisma, I think Patrick will also reap a lot of benefit from this.

I’ll stick to my estimates for now, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Healey drop even lower, and the race between Patrick and Mihos to be much closer than anyone would have expected.

One of my friends came back from the polls around 2:30 this afternoon. Apparently, at that time, only 400 people had voted at our polling place, a polling place which covers Cambridge’s Ward 2 Precinct 3, Ward 3 Precinct 3, and Ward 5. When he voted, as when I did (around 8:30 am), there were no lines. Something tells me that 400 people is a very small fraction of the total people covered. It’s probably safe to assume that a lot of people will be voting after work, but how big a fraction will that be? The polls are only open until 7, which leaves less than 2 hours for most people.

In a neighborhood in which I’ve seen very little other than Deval Patrick signs, it leaves me to wonder if the polls we’ve seen up till now are actually representative of the people who vote rather than just the people who are eligible to vote. Sure 51-ish% of the people polled before may prefer Patrick, but who knows if they’re actually going to vote. And if Patrick’s monstrous lead is eroded, who knows what will actually happen.

My impression from watching the polls and people’s opinions over the past few weeks has been that very few people actually like Kerry Healey. I suspect that the vast majority of the 21% of people who poll in her favor are doing so because they’re party-line Republican voters and not because they actually like her. Patrick, on the other hand, has all the party-line Democrat voters, plus the moderate Democrats and many moderate Republicans. Whereas Mihos has the disillusioned voters from both parties, probably a good portion of the Libertarian vote, and those Republicans who don’t like Healey but can’t bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. Ross, well Ross has the environmentalists, and a portion of the gay vote.

While obviously it’s difficult to impossible to predict the way the vote will actually break down, my hunch is that low turnout would probably hurt Healey the most, then Patrick, with Mihos and Ross tied for least affected. Healey will be hurt the worse because the people who I think area actually going to vote for her are the ones that are the least emotionally invested in the election. Patrick has obviously done a good job of drumming up public support, he’s very charismatic and that’s what’s going to carry his vote, but he still will suffer when the generic Democrats don’t care enough to go to the polls. Mihos and Ross are only getting votes from people who actually care. They don’t have the apathetic party-line voters who might or might not show up, which, I think, artificially deflates their ratings in opinion polls.

So my prediction is that in the final count, Mihos and Ross will come up from their previous polling numbers. Not necessarily because people came out to support them who weren’t represented in the polls, although I think that will happen for Mihos as well, but because Healey and Patrick will lose votes to apathy. I wouldn’t expect Healey to get much more than 17-18% in the final count. Patrick, I think, will remain strong, but still drop to high 30s to low 40s. I’d give Ross around 5%. And maybe I’m being optimistic, but I think Mihos will break well into the double-digits, possibly into the 40s beating even Patrick.

For the first time in my voting history, I actually got to the polls before the lines today. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed to discover that Cambridge uses the same kind of polls that I used in Northfield, MN: the kind where you just fill in the bubbles with a marker. Just once I’d like to use one of the old machines where you actually pull a lever. At least these ones are simple, easy, and unlikely to cause confusion.

Sticking with my view that you should vote for a candidate, not for a party, I cast my ballot for a mix of Republicans, Democrats, Green-Rainbows, Independents, and even a candidate from the Working Families party; I also like to vote for the third party candidates, especially in races where they’re only running against one other candidate who’s almost definitely going to win. As I’m sure you all have guessed, my vote for governor went to the independent candidate: Christy Mihos. In the last poll he was only polling at 8%, but we can always hope. I do think he’s likely to break into double-digits in the actual polls, if nothing else, and I would definitely like to be able to congratulate him as my next governor tonight. Time shall tell.

I hope everyone out there who’s reading this is going to vote, if they haven’t already. And if you’re in Massachusetts, vote Mihos for governor!

Though it involved no gunpowder, treason, or plot, this Guy Fawkes Night (Which is also one of my favorite holidays, even though I’m not British and don’t celebrate it. There’s just something about a holiday during which you burn people in effigy…), it was certainly still a night to remember. Tonight, Jessi and I made an offer on a townhouse/condo. I think this means that we’re officially Big Kids. It also means that, barring unforeseen problems, we’ll soon no longer be residents of Cambridge, but of Somerville, the second move this year for both of us. The process of home-buying has been, so far, pretty painless. I’ll write about it in more detail, but I’ll wait until we finish the process first.

In other news, I went to my first Carleton College alumni event the other night. I don’t know why, but I never really bothered to get involved with any of that stuff in San Francisco. I suppose it probably had to do with already knowing lots of people in the area and having a regular office job that brought with it some really great friends, whereas here I know fewer people, and don’t get to meet as many new friends through work. Anyway, the event was actually a lot of fun. It was largely ‘05ers and ‘06ers, then myself and one of two others from the class of ‘04, and a couple from ‘02 and ‘03. Amazingly enough, I actually ran into someone that I played rugby with freshman year. I also met a guy who’s currently a corporate lawyer working with biotech firms. He pointed me towards some Mac users he knows in the industry, so hopefully I’ll even get some business out of the event which, I suppose, just goes to show that a little networking is always worthwhile.

Oh yeah, I’m also in need of a haircut. I haven’t had to do that yet here, so I have no idea where to go. Any and all recommendations are welcome. Preferably somewhere that’s likely to be able to squeeze me in before tuesday night when I’ll be attending Christy Mihos’ election night party.

Just got back from the aforementioned Celebration of political bloggers. It was very cool, much cooler than I expected actually. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, though I was hoping there would be some big names there. I got more than I expected and met: Steve Garfield, David Kravitz, David Weinberger, Shai Sachs, and others. Sadly, I’m horribly bad at names and have forgotten a few good ones. Also sadly, and more on this in a bit, I had no business cards on me to give to the several people who asked me for them. One thing they should definitely do, which I suppose they still could and if they don’t I might offer to start doing it for the future meetings which I attend (and I intend to start attending their regular Thursday meetings with some regularity), is, after the meeting, send an email to everyone who attended listing the names and blogs of everyone who was there. I think that for those people who don’t have cards and those that have poor memories for names it would really increase the value of the meetings. The meetings normally take place on Thursdays at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School: link. I recommend it for anyone who’s into blogging. Jessi also really enjoyed it, expect a good post from her about it in the near future.

I’m really excited about having met Steve Garfield. He’s a big name, and doing some very cool stuff. Plus, there’s an immediate business connection: he shot this video on his cell phone. I don’t know what it is, but something about that piqued my curiosity as Editor in Chief of cellphonetechnews.com. If I can just put my finger on what it is, maybe I’ll write a story about it…

Now back to Kinko’s and my lack of business cards. In preparation for this event specifically I wanted to make sure I had some business cards to hand out. I knew it would be a stretch, but I called Kinko’s this morning and asked them if it would be possible for me to have some cards printed up by 5pm if I brought them right in (it’s a 10 minute walk from my apartment). They said sure, just come by with a PDF, no problem. So I did. They said they’d have it ready by 5, and I figured I was good to go. Three o’clock rolls around and I figure that they, as they often do, might have finished the job early. So I gave them a call. The guy who answered the phone says to me ‘oh, well I left you a message’… no, actually you didn’t … ‘you need to re-create the PDF because the way it is now we can’t do it’. Um, great. And you couldn’t tell me this when I brought it in and we looked at the PDF together and you told me it wouldn’t be a problem? I wasn’t planning on using Kinko’s for my business cards anyway, they’re just convenient and fast, but now I’ll definitely be getting them printed up elsewhere. My dad actually recommended a place a while ago that he used for his cards, but I can’t remember the name of it and for some reason Spotlight has been completely useless lately. Oh well, he’ll probably see this and remind me of it. (Hi dad!) The plus side is that I’ve recently come up with what I think is a much better design for the business cards anyway, so now I won’t have to print any up with the old design.

Sadly I missed the debate last night because Jessi and I were meeting with a realtor. From the accounts I’ve read so far, it sounds like it was a great debate, and I really wish I’d seen it. Here’s one good account of it, another is here, and I’m hoping we’ll get one later from Jesse Legg. If only this was the sort of thing they’d show re-runs of the next day…

I did, however, get an interesting and germane piece of mail yesterday. It came from the Mihos gubernatorial campaign, and is an invitation to the campaign’s Election Night 2006 Celebration at the Radisson Hotel. I definitely plan to go. It should be a great opportunity to meet Christy, and, hopefully, congratulate my next governor. At the very least, I imagine there will be free food and probably champagne.

First, the big news: another local blogger, Jesse Legg, has referred to the Massachusetts gubernatorial race as ‘Mass Guber’. Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I’m taking credit for that.

Title aside, Jesse’s written an excellent post about the upcoming Gubernatorial debate an Faneuil Hall this Thursday. His breakdown of the candidates and what they need to accomplish in this debate is spot-on. And he, as a fellow Mihos supporter, hits it right on the nose when talking about the Mihos campaign:

Christy Mihos; I was so excited for him. I handed out bumper stickers and buttons. His commercials were spot on, clean and critical but not attack ads. My support continues but, as I blogged about last week, I’m mildly concerned for the campaign. He had a lot of momentum after the initial debate. I’m going to watch closely Thursday to make sure he isn’t giving up. Maybe he’s low on funds. Maybe he plans another blitz Friday morning. I hope for the latter. Just keep it clean and come out fighting.

I couldn’t agree more. Mihos has an amazing energy and charisma that speaks to people, even people who wouldn’t otherwise consider an independent candidate. On paper he is a fantastic candidate, his campaign has been well run, and his ads have been amazing. But in the last few weeks Christy Mihos has just sort of dropped off the radar. I haven’t heard or seen anything about it. I hope it’s just the calm before the storm and that the campaign will be gearing up following Thursday’s debate to finish out the race with a bang. Mihos may still be polling in single digits, but if he can put on a good show at the remaining debates and campaign hard to get his name, face, and message out there, I still think he stands a chance. He will, at least, have my vote on November 7.

In other Mihos news, Peter Howe of the Boston Globe, has written an excellent article on Mihos. It touches on all the key points of Mihos’ platform, but, most importantly, it talks about his stance on business, and particularly small businesses. I had previously written directly to the Mihos campaign about exactly this issue. Although I never got a reply directly on that question (I did get a persona reply, however), I consider this article to probably be better than just an email to me would have been. When asked what he would do for small businesses in Massachusetts (such as his own) he responds, ‘The only thing a governor can do is take away the stress and burden that fall on my customers each and every day. Take away their fees, their fines, their taxes [and] just make it so that people that are coming in to see me are happy and can afford to live here’.

While on some level it would be nice to hear that he’d give aid specifically to small businesses or do something that would directly benefit me, in truth, this is, I think, the right position for him to take. It’s not government’s place to decide which businesses live and die, it’s the place of the consumer. All government can and should do is stay out of the way as much as possible. Christy Mihos, as a small business owner, gets that, and I, as a small business owner, am glad that there’s a candidate out there who does.

And, in other Mihos news, yet another blogger has come out as a Mihos supporter. Says Roger, of Mass Maddness:

Massachusetts needs a real-change candidate, a description that doesn’t apply to either the Democrat or Republican candidate. But it does describe Christy Mihos — too bad the voters, the media, and Beacon Hill write him off. But why is Mihos the right man for the job? Because he’s open, he cares, and he (at least tries) to bridge any left-right babble.

Emily Rooney over at The Greater Boston Blog posted today an article entitled Let’s Be Honest. In it she advocates excluding Christy Mihos and Grace Ross from the remaining gubernatorial debates. Apparently she thinks that just because they qualified to be on the ballot, that doesn’t mean we get to hear what they think about the issues. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what it means for them to qualify to be on the ballot.

In justification for this position, she cites the latest polls in which Mihos has 7% of the vote and Ross 1%, claiming that this ‘means both candidates are out of the running’. I beg to differ. Admittedly, 8% of the vote won’t win anyone anything, but it represents approximately half a million Massachusetts voters who think that Mihos and Ross have something worthwhile to say. Are we to completely ignore those 500,000+ people? Who knows what will happen in the next 30-some days. For all we know, something that Mihos or Ross says in one of the next debates, debates Rooney doesn’t want them to attend, will be the thing that opens the floodgates and wins them the election. All candidates have the right to be heard, and the voters of Massachusetts have the right to hear them.

She does have one good point when she asks ‘But are they qualified to be governor and do the voters of Massachusetts think they are?’. It’s an excellent question and one that should, nay must be addressed. Fortunately we already have some very excellent mechanisms in place for addressing exactly those questions. They’re called debates and elections.

Sadly, I actually missed a big chunk of the debate because I was called away by work. On the plus side, I’m getting enough work that it actually pulled me away from the debate. I did, however, see enough to address the four points that I wanted addressed.

First: Healey’s performance
I though Healey did a much better job than in the last debate in terms of simply presenting herself well. She had obviously been coached much more extensively this time and was much more on top of her game. The biggest effect of this, I think, was that she actually acknowledged that there were more than two candidates in the race. Unfortunately she forgot that fact again in her closing remarks. Overall I thought her performance was still pretty disappointing. She represents the status quo that people don’t want, and she knows it, so she does little other than point out why (she think) her opponents’ (really, just Patrick’s) positions are even worse than hers. She also keeps harping on and on about how horrible it would be to have Democrats in control of both the governor’s office and the legislature. I agree with her, that it’s, in general, not a very good idea, but it’s also not really a position you can run on. If the race were closely contested and she and Patrick were neck and neck, then it might become a valid point to campaign on, but when she’s trailing by as much as she is in the polls she really needs to point out her positives not Patrick’s negatives.

Second: Patrick’s performace
I still don’t think that Patrick lived up to his reputation in this regard, but he, like Healey, gave a much better performance than in the last debate. I was, as usual, somewhat disappointed on his actual policy, but I still think that he would, politics aside, make an excellent governor. I also really liked the way that he addressed the Cape Wind question, and I think that his rationale for not supporting the income tax rollback is a good one: yes it would be great to cut that .3% on everyone’s income tax, and yes the people voted for it, but before we can do it we need to cut spending by that much. I also approve of his statement that it’s more important to cut property taxes first.

Third: Ross’ performance
Sadly, Ross did not pick up any hints in terms of wardrobe or makeup. She wore the same blue …thing that she wore last time and looked more like she should be a shopkeeper on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley than a gubernatorial candidate. She did, however, display an amazing improvement in terms of speaking. Her statements were much clearer and more organized, she spent less time trying to identify herself as part of the ‘lower 60%’ (although she did mention it at least once), and she consistently gave intelligent, coherent, and well thought out responses. Listening to her speak, and watching her demeanor, she actually gave me the impression that she could do a good job as governor. I’m still not going to vote for her for a number of reasons, but I was very impressed with her performance tonight.

Fourth: Mihos’ performance
Mihos, I think, may have actually done a little worse in this debate than in the previous one. He didn’t seem quite as on top of things and fantastically coherent as in the last debate, and he had lost some of the general charm that he displayed before. I think part of that may have been the lighting… He did still do a good job though, and he, and Ross, surprisingly, both drew a lot of applause and laughter from the audience (For which they were sternly admonished by the moderator. The audience, that is. Amusingly enough, Healey got by far the least reaction from the crowd, if any at all.) He did, I think, focus less on attacking Healey (at least in the parts that I saw), and instead focused more on the Republican party in general. That aside, I think he did an excellent job of answering the questions posed, though if he brought up the small business issues I had hoped he would, he did it while I was working.

Moving on from the actual debate, another local blogger and Mihos supporter Jesse Legg had a very insightful post earlier today. He talked about how the candidates are not doing a very good job of leveraging the internet. As Howard Dean showed two years ago, the internet can be a very effective tool in campaigning. He suggested using YouTube as a medium for debate, with each candidate offering their answers to the questions in separate videos. I think this is an excellent idea, and would do a lot, not only for the candidates, but for the state political blogging. How much improved would a blog be if you could embed YouTube videos of the candidates speaking on an issue in the paragraph in which you talked about their position on that issue? Short of recording, digitizing, and editing the debates yourself, this really isn’t a possibility right now.

Amusingly enough, this is actually one of the issues I brought up in my letter to Christy Mihos. His last ad has an amazing presence on the web. It’s become a viral video and has brought national awareness to Mihos and his campaign. As Jessi can tell you, virals can be a very effective marketing mechanism, and anything that works for marketing can be adapted to campaigning. I also really think that candidates should maintain their own blogs, or at least offer something to bloggers. In 2004, Gary Nolan, one of the candidates for the Libertarian nomination (and the man I wanted to vote for) maintained a blog and provided web banners for his supporters to put on their websites. I would love to be able to put a Christy Mihos banner on my blog, but one simply isn’t available. None of the other candidates are offering anything like it either. In addition to simply spreading awareness, it obviously will also act as a distinguisher; never a bad thing. I anxiously await a reply from the Mihos campaign to my email, and hope they’ll be able to provide a good perspective on this (and maybe even start taking advantage of it).