Patrick leads following of hard-core loyalists

John O'Brien , a 76-year-old retired schoolteacher from Mission Hill , promised the Deval Patrick campaign that he would hand-write 90 letters to voters in his neighborhood. He got to number 46 before he wore out. So he wrote a letter of apology to the campaign, explaining he was undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma.

``What's 90 letters?" O'Brien said in an interview last week, disappointed with himself.

The Patrick faithful tend to be hard-core, unusually defensive of their candidate, and persistently proud of their organizational skills.

There are three songs in the candidate's honor, including ``A Vote for Deval is a Vote for Us All" by the folk rock duo Sweet Wednesday . (``Massachusetts needs our help/I heard it give a frightened yelp/ As it drank a glass of bad polluted water . . .")

Six North Shore volunteers keep a blog called ``The Deval Experience," in which they chronicle their adventures and scold anti-Patrick blasphemers. A supporter from Reading had a sheet cake made that was a replica of a blue Patrick bumper sticker.

It is a surprising turn for a man who has never run for elective office before, and who has no guarantee of success on Sept. 19. But his fans say they were hooked by the way he listens to their questions -- always with a follow-up question or a humorous aside -- and by the way he talks about the campaign, as if it is a movement, rather than a machine, a coming together of good people for better government.

``You feel part of," said the Rev. Faith Tolson-Pierce of the Greater Framingham Community Church , the largest predominantly African-American church in the Metrowest area. ``You're not standing on the outside looking in; you're engaged, and part of the process."

Patrick often eschews policy nuts and bolts in his stump speeches, preferring to focus on broader ideals about governance and citizen involvement. His supporters, many of whom say they've read the policy fine print on the campaign website, want a candidate who thinks big.

``He speaks about fundamental matters -- community, and what that means, and that government is us," said Donna Corbett , 46 , of Reading .

Marianne Rutter , a marketing director for a small British press from Boxford , and one of the Deval Experience bloggers, said spending 10 to 12 hours a week campaigning has made her feel as if she is finally ``contributing to change on the public scene."

``Deval has consistently called this our campaign, not my campaign," she said. ``I think the way Deval looks at his campaign is a conversation with the people of Massachusetts over issues that are important to them."

History, of course, is littered with the sun-bleached yard signs of people-powered candidates who lost on election day, from Eugene McCarthy to Howard Dean. Four years ago, former Clinton labor secretary Robert B. Reich said he had 7,000 volunteers working the phones and knocking on doors.

``It's not enough," said Reich, another Patrick supporter, in a phone interview from Berkeley, Ca., where he is a public policy professor. ``But it can almost get you there."

``I think everyone who hears him has that same sense, that here is the one who is going to be what he says he is," said Paul Hush , 76 , of Brewster , a Cape Cod retiree who spent the summer in Boston to work for Patrick. ``You just feel it."