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	Patrick rakes in the out-of-state cash TOM Reilly’s gay-marriage travails constitute a major opening for Deval Patrick, Bill Clinton’s former assistant attorney general for civil rights. Unlike Reilly, Patrick is unabashedly pro-gay-marriage; if he runs for governor, he’d be the only candidate who backs full marriage rights (see "The Deval Patrick Show," News and Features, January 28). This, in turn, should help Patrick’s fundraising. "People are looking very, very seriously at helping Patrick financially to make it possible for him to become viable," says one gay activist. "Reilly really hurt himself the way he handled [the Braude interview]. He just kind of shot himself in the foot." Civil-rights activist and gay-marriage supporter Woody Kaplan was one of the first to give Patrick cash, writing a $500 check last month. But Kaplan emphasizes that he didn’t donate solely because of gay marriage. "We had a constitutional officer — [former AG] Scott Harshbarger — run six years ago, and he lost," Kaplan says. "Two years ago, we had another constitutional officer, state treasurer Shannon O’Brien, run, and she lost. My theory is that neither politics as usual nor politicians as usual can capture the corner office, and that Deval Patrick is one of those really special human beings that can capture the imagination of the public and win the general election." (Seems constitutional officer Tom Reilly won’t be getting money from Kaplan anytime soon.) So far, other wealthy pro-gay-marriage donors haven’t given much to Patrick. But the Milton resident has enjoyed significant support from outside Massachusetts: according to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance’s Web site, $12,200 of the $21,701 in donations Patrick has itemized so far came from out of state, much of it in hefty $500 donations. (These figures exclude a $100,000 contribution Patrick made to himself.) Patrick, who plans to make an official announcement about his candidacy in March, already may be working to rectify this imbalance. (Dan Payne, Patrick’s spokesperson, declined to comment this week on the out-of-state funding.) If it persists, however, Patrick — who grew up in Chicago, but who has called Massachusetts home since high school — risks being portrayed as an out-of-towner. That probably wouldn’t be a problem in a general-election matchup with Romney, whose Massachusetts residency was questioned by state Democrats in 2002 and whose biographical high point — the 2002 Winter Olympic Games — came in Salt Lake City, Utah. But it could be an issue in a primary contest against Reilly, a Springfield native who’s lived in Massachusetts his entire life. Then again, Romney’s enormous personal wealth makes the next Democratic gubernatorial candidate’s ability to fundraise extremely important. If Patrick shows he can raise enough money to compete with the governor, people may not care where his donors come from. — AR

Some Democratic observers argue (hopefully, perhaps) that this particular shift from vagueness to clarity will hurt Romney if he runs for re-election in 2006. "This state understands that stem-cell research and biotech are the future of keeping the kids at home," says one. "We’ve always been smarter than other states — that’s what we sell, brainpower and educational facilities. When you have the governor say, ‘I don’t want to do the kinds of things that will make us competitive with other states,’ that does not fare well as a long-term strategy." Of course, there’s no firm consensus among political observers on whether Romney will run in ’06 or instead skip what surely would be a bitterly fought re-election campaign to gear up for a presidential run in ’08. If it’s the latter, the same Democrat admits, Romney’s new stem-cell stance should be an asset. It "does help him when he goes to the Republican primaries in Iowa and those places," he says. "His audience is not Massachusetts. This is about running for president." (Romney’s decision to skip this week’s legislative hearing on stem-cell research certainly lends credence to this argument.)

The governor is making a calculated gamble here. Anti-abortion die-hards may find it unsatisfying; indeed, he’s already been panned by the National Right to Life Committee, Massachusetts Citizens for Life, and the Massachusetts Catholic Conference. On the other hand, Catholic World News, a conservative Massachusetts-based online publication, quickly praised Romney as a voice of restraint. "Other than the Mormon governor, there’s been no word from any leader, much less from the Catholic clergy," CWN wrote. (CWN also noted that Boston archbishop Seán O’Malley has yet to address the issue publicly.) On the other side of the ideological spectrum, meanwhile, Romney’s stance might appeal to liberals who balk at blanket opposition to stem-cell research but, at the same time, feel uneasy about science’s growing ability to control the building blocks of life. If so, Romney’s Solomonic compromise ultimately could prove a savvy move.

IT’S HARDER to imagine Reilly benefiting from his views on gay marriage. On abortion and stem-cell research, Reilly’s positions are unequivocal: the AG is pro-choice and supports Travaglini’s stem-cell-research bill. But his gay-marriage stance is a Kerry-esque bundle of nuance and contradiction. Here are the rudiments: as AG, Romney defended the Commonwealth’s right to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples, arguing in one brief that gay parents were less effective than heterosexual ones. (Reilly later expressed regret for making that argument.) Once the Supreme Judicial Court ruled, he refused Romney’s request to seek a stay of implementation — then sided with the governor in using a 1913 anti-miscegenation law to deter out-of-state same-sex couples from marrying here. Today, Reilly says that Massachusetts needs to move on, and that if a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage but allowing civil unions makes it to the ballot in 2006, he will vote against it. But despite saying he doesn’t believe in taking people’s rights away, Reilly refuses to urge state legislators to kill the amendment during this year’s Constitutional Convention. It is, he insists, a matter for the legislature to decide. And despite hinting, in the NECN interview, that he has come to view marriage differently in the past year — "There is so much good that has come out of this in terms of the relationships that have now resulted in marriage; there’s so much happiness" — a source close to Reilly says that’s not the case. "He has a traditional view of marriage," the source said this week. "His personal beliefs haven’t changed."

Given this morass, it’s not surprising that Grossman would have a different read on Reilly’s position than does the man himself — to say nothing of the media and gay activists. But the Reilly camp doggedly asserts the AG shifted not a whit last week. "Really," the same source said, "he’s just had a consistent belief in protecting people’s rights throughout this."

Here’s the problem: if a position is so confusing that one of your closest advisers, not to mention the general public, has trouble figuring it out, refusing to change it is folly. Reilly seems obsessed with consistency, possibly because of his years as a prosecutor. (Polling that shows voters regard Reilly as more trustworthy than Romney also might be to blame.) But even Mr. Steadfast himself, George W. Bush, will change his stands when necessary (supporting the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the 9/11 Commission, say).

But Reilly, by embracing mutually contradictory positions and refusing to budge from them, has boxed himself in. Gay political activists aren’t impressed. "Supporting gay marriage in Massachusetts is not a profile in courage — it’s the politically smart thing to do," says Josh Friedes of the Freedom To Marry Coalition. "I think Tom Reilly is making the same mistake that John Kerry made in dealing with the gay-marriage issue. What voters respect are principled positions, and Tom Reilly is not articulating a clearly principled position." Adds Arline Isaacson, co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus: "We need a candidate for governor who plays a leadership role and not a passive role on an issue as important as this. We need a leader who will affirmatively pronounce that this should not go to the ballot." Also unimpressed, for that matter, are some Democratic insiders. "I would have said, ‘The biggest weakness in politics today is the inability to get new information and change your mind — and those people who think I’m doing this for votes don’t know Tom Reilly,’ " says one. "What would have been so terrible? He doesn’t get any credit for what he’s doing now. All he does is piss off people."

And that, in the end, is why Mitt Romney got the better of Tom Reilly last week. Time will tell if the attorney general learns that changing your mind can be a good thing. But if the past is prologue, he probably won’t.

Adam Reilly can be reached at areilly[a]phx.com