Governor of the people
Five days might be too many and $1 million might be too much, but it is fiction to characterize the festivities being planned to make Governor-elect Deval Patrick's inauguration more accessible as some bacchanalia for Democratic insiders.
If anything, those insiders are whining that they have too little influence with the first Democratic governor in 16 years whose first Cabinet appointee, Leslie Kirwan as secretary of administration and finance, made her mark as a budget analyst in the administration of William F. Weld, former Republican governor.
The movers and shakers planning Patrick's inaugural events across the state are not Democratic swells; they are the same citizen-volunteers who helped orchestrate his historic victory at the polls last month.
There is the Wilmington teacher who proposed busing more than 1,000 high school students from across the state to Tremont Temple Baptist Church in Boston for a "youth inaugural" and a firsthand civics lesson.
There is the Cape Cod retiree who signed up the Paul Nossiter jazz trio on Friday to play at a two-hour reception on Jan. 7 in Hyannis, where, for $20 per person, celebrants can enjoy music, munch on crudités, and hear Patrick speak.
There is the Andover youth basketball coach who is gathering a committee of volunteers this week to plan a similar reception for residents of the Merrimack Valley and the North Shore.
"Sure, they are going to spend money on the gala itself," Paul Hush said of the formal inaugural ball at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in South Boston. "Our event on the Cape is a way to say that, though the campaign has ended, there's still a role for all of us. I know the enthusiasm is there and I think he is smart to want to keep it alive."
Hush and his wife, Joanne, let out their Cape Cod home last summer, rented an apartment in Charlestown, and hit the campaign trail. Paul is in his 70s, but he hardly qualifies as a seasoned political operative. Their first campaign experience was in 2000 during former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley's failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
This year, they traveled to every corner of Massachusetts, organizing rallies and community forums for Patrick. To Paul Hush, the inaugural parties being planned are meant to acknowledge the often-ignored voters beyond metropolitan Boston.
"If I could do it in a day, I would," Patrick said in a telephone conversation Friday evening of his plans to travel from Pittsfield to Hyannis to greet voters, "but it's a big state and I need to sleep. The whole point is to find a way to keep people engaged, all the people, not just the people in the capital city."
This is not to say there have not been missteps in the weeks since Patrick broke the Republican hold on the corner office.
It was a mistake, quickly corrected, for incoming Lieutenant Governor Timothy P. Murray to accept an invitation to a closed-door forum at one of the city's most prominent lobbying firms. More problematic, and less likely to be reversed, is the decision to solicit corporate donations of as much as $50,000 for the privately financed inaugural gala.
Collecting small donations from people of modest means was at the heart of the Patrick campaign, a real and symbolic refutation of the big money contributors who have come to dominate American politics.
If tapping corporate donors for the inaugural looks like a contradiction, Patrick says he understands that perception, " but no one is buying access to me. I wanted the people who made this victory possible to be able to celebrate it and to do that takes money."
In a gesture designed to underscore his commitment to lead all of Massachusetts, not just the insiders, Patrick hopes literally to take his inauguration outside. He wants to take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural address directly to the people on the State House steps.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com. 
