Another Obama Surrogate Defends Bain Capital
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ended up defending Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Thursday during TV appearances in which the Democratic politician was supposed to be serving as a surrogate for President Barack Obama. Patrick, who has a history of ethically questionable connections to financial firms, applauded Boston-based Bain Capital, implicitly criticizing the Obama campaign's attacks on Romney's record at the private equity firm.
Patrick is the second Obama surrogate with strong ties to the financial industry to defend Bain, following in the footsteps of Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, who ignited a week of outrage from Democratic Party strategists for describing the Obama campaign's slams against Romney's Bain work as "nauseating."
Patrick, who followed Romney as governor of the Bay State, praised Bain in two separate TV appearances on Thursday.
"I've got a lot of friends there," he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," calling Bain "a perfectly fine company" with "a role to play in the private economy."
"I think the Bain strategy has been distorted in some of the public discussions," said Patrick. "I think the issue isn't about Bain. I think it's about whether [Romney has] accomplished, in either his public or private life, the kinds of things he wants to accomplish for the United States."
The governor reiterated his position on CNN's "Starting Point," declaring, "It's never been about Bain."
Patrick's close relationship with Ameriquest, once one of the largest subprime lenders in the country, was widely criticized during his first campaign for governor in 2006. As head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in the 1990s, he had settled a discriminatory lending complaint against Ameriquest for $4 million -- a relatively small amount for the lender. Patrick later landed on Ameriquest's board, where he made $360,000 a year, according to a report in the Boston Globe. While serving on the board, Patrick personally lobbied the U.S. Senate to grant Ameriquest's CEO an ambassadorship, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
Patrick -- who has also worked for Coca-Cola and the Ford Foundation -- stayed on the subprime lender's board during the housing bubble from 2004 to 2006, even as the embattled lender began settling several high-profile predatory lending lawsuits. He resigned from Ameriquest's board during his first run for governor, just prior to the company's financial collapse, but not before he asked Citigroup executive and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to provide Ameriquest with emergency financial assistance, according to the Globe. Citigroup acquired Ameriquest in 2008.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/31/deval-patrick-bain-capital-massachusetts-governor_n_1560168.html
These Democrats don't want to mess up their money flow. Do these guys want Obama to lose? Even, if they didn't want to attack Bain, whatever happened to no comment or segueing to another topic? First Corey and now Devel Patrick, who is next, Bill Clinton.
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