Reading the messenger

The latest broadside in a career built on them was launched this week at Governor Deval Patrick. Rivers, in what he branded an "open letter" to the governor, made the case that Patrick has been a huge disappointment to the black voters who flocked to the polls on his behalf. He closed by suggesting that Patrick doesn't deserve to be reelected, and called for a public discussion on Patrick's performance with regard to the black community.

In a separate letter released the same day, he asked Treasurer Tim Cahill, who's itching to run against Patrick, for a meeting. The reaction was predictable. The administration chose to mostly ignore the provocateur. An array of black ministers and officials immediately distanced themselves from the ideas floated in the letter, and from Rivers himself.

The impression Patrick's supporters mean to convey is that Rivers is a loose cannon speaking only for himself. He is particularly easy to portray this way, as a gadfly with, shall we say, malleable political convictions. He can be a conservative commentator on Fox News one week and a liberal on MSNBC the next. He has infuriated the black establishment in this town for nearly two decades. The streets are littered with former allies and protégés who don't speak to him. Brilliant and charismatic, Rivers is a political movement of one.

Yesterday, Rivers was, characteristically, refusing to back down. He insisted that he was saying publicly only what people all over town have said privately.

"I understand the ritual," he said with a laugh. "I knew I was going to take [criticism]. It doesn't make any difference to me what anyone writes about me, because there's got to be a discussion."

In truth, discomfort has been brewing, in fits and starts, for some time. It is in the voices of people who say Patrick has not done enough to confront urban violence. People who support criminal records reform have been critics, though Patrick has taken some modest steps in that area. His record of appointing black judges to the bench - 3 of 29 at one recent point - would get a white governor skewered by black activists. But despite private grumbling, they have been reluctant to criticize Patrick publicly for what he admits is a weak record on this issue.

This is difficult terrain for everyone involved. Blacks are very reluctant to criticize the first African-American governor in the state's history. And in truth, some of the criticism is plainly unfair. What other governor has ever been held responsible for homicides in Boston?

This is the painful downside of running as a transformational figure. When you run as the candidate of hope and change, and people don't think much has changed, you get to own it.

Horace Small of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods counts himself among the disappointed. "There are very few things that I agree with Gene Rivers about, but he's not far off on this," Small said. "He has not come close to fulfilling the promise of his campaign."

Small suggested that Rivers's critics are simply afraid to offend a governor who has been known to take criticism personally. "These are people who have state contracts, or who hope to have state contracts when things get better," he said. "This is how Massachusetts, especially black Massachusetts, works. People don't want to rock the boat."

Even factoring in the up-and-down nature of his term, Patrick's relationship with black voters has been volatile. That is partly the result of a fiscal meltdown that has placed most of his promises on hold, and partly because of expectations - driven by symbolism - that would have been hard for anyone to live up to.

Rivers concedes that black voters are unlikely to support Cahill over Patrick. He insisted yesterday that his only goal was to begin a discussion. That he has accomplished - but little did he know that it would be about him, not his intended target.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.