The governor’s victory

In a working class city such as ours, the governor’s campaign message resonated.

His plea to voters was to help people who need it, to treat people as human beings not as numbers on a Charlie Baker spread sheet.

The strategy worked.

The governor won and Baker’s ambition to cause a lot of hurt in order to make some savings didn’t resonate.

What resonated was the governor’s humanity, the feeling he holds inside about people – that people depend on government when the chips are down and if you can’t depend on government in the bad times, who can you depend on?

The Republicans led by Baker promised tax cuts, state employee dismissals, program cuts and cuts of every kind while at the same time promising to cut taxes and to reform state government.

More people believed Patrick than Baker and when all the votes were counted here, Patrick had won by a wide margin.

Last year, the pundits said Patrick didn’t have a chance of winning. His negatives were too high.

But that all changed when Baker started campaigning.

The governor now must confront the expected $2 billion budget deficit expected for fiscal 2011.

He will not promise tax cuts.

He will not destroy peoples’ lives by making more cuts just for the sake of shrinking numbers in the government employment game.

What he will do is to attempt to create more jobs and to make a better environment for small business to operate and to grow in Massachusetts.

He will carry out his promise made during the campaign to continue the turn around of the local economy, to maintain the funding of public schools and to move forward recognizing that Massachusetts is all about people and not just about numbers.