CNN "The Lead With Jake Tapper" - Transcript: Democratic Presidential Candidate Deval Patrick is Interviewed About His Campaign
Interview
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DEVAL PATRICK (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, first of all, the same things that attracted me to think hard about -- and in fact, plan for a run in 2018 are present today.
[16:30:06]
Meaning, an appetite for solutions equal to the size and difficulty of our challenges is just in the most incredible occasion right now that I can think of in much of my life -- in much of my life.
I think the field is enormously talented and the emphasis on fixing broken systems is huge. But the way you actually getting lasting change in my experience, whether it's in government or in business or in civil rights advocacy or so on is bringing in people who may not agree with you, but have to be a part of the conversation about how get a lasting and meaningful change.
And I think alongside that, we need a strategy and I am presenting a strategy on how we grow the economy, so that we're expanding out to the middle and the marginalized, and not just up to the well- connected.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Well, now, let me just ask you this question about the technicalities of all of this. When I say you're getting into the race in the last minute, you have missed the filing deadlines for two of the Super Tuesday states.
PATRICK: That's right, that's right.
TAPPER: Other candidates have had nearly a year to raise money, win over voters and meet voters. What's your path to the nomination? How do you win it?
PATRICK: You know, first, I should say that the reason I didn't get in, the penultimate reason I didn't get in over a year ago is you may remember my wife, Diane, was diagnosed with uterine cancer just around this time last year and --
TAPPER: God bless, she's OK. Yes.
PATRICK: Yes, she is. And it is a blessing, indeed. Thank you.
She -- we celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary in May and she's cancer free. It was found early. She's -- she went through the surgery brilliantly. And her forecast is really, really positive.
And so, you know, that's the sort of thing that brings your feet right back to earth. And it seemed to me that no matter how tempting this moment in our civic and political life is for the kind of leadership that I wanted to offer, I had to focus there first.
She's better. We had a lot of conversation with an awful lot of people who have been encouraging me to run. And I think some of the most profound and moving and meaningful encouragement has come from people I don't know, people that have just found their way to me and said, you need to reconsider.
And so, we came to a point where I thought, you know, I really need to understand not just the sense whether the electorate is undecided, and I think that's very much the case, but whether practically you can make it happen at this point. And that decision we came to fairly quickly, but fairly recently. And we've been building a terrific team in short order. And we're going to be very, very competitive. I'm confident of that.
TAPPER: So, let me tell you one thing that you're going to be hit on if you haven't already figured it out. You have ties -- deep ties with big corporations. You just resigned from Bain Capital, which Democrats obviously pilloried Mitt Romney for having worked for in 2012.
PATRICK: Right.
TAPPER: You were brought onboard ACC Capital Holdings to help fix its subsidiary, Ameriquest Mortgage Company, which was accused of predatory lending. You have said --
PATRICK: Right.
TAPPER: -- that you can't win, you don't think, if you don't allow a super PAC to be built. And this is a big debate going on in the Democratic primaries.
How do you convince all of these Democrats, liberals, progressives that you're not part of the problem?
PATRICK: Well, listen, I think that, you know, you know I'm a capitalist. I'm not a market fundamentalist. I don't think private markets in the private sector solves every problem that needs to be solved in our society right on time.
And capitalism has -- particularly the way we have practiced it here in the United States for the last, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 years, has a whole lot to answer for. As part of the work I have been doing, the work I did at Texaco to fix a broken employment system and make it fair and transparent. Similarly at Coca-Cola, and now in investing or recently in investing, in companies that can deliver both a financial return and meaningful social or environmental impacts, so that you can show you don't have to trade the one for the other.
I brought that same spirit of reform, big, systemic reform, setting an example of what's possible in my work as a lawyer, in my work in the governor's office in eight years. And I'm proud of that.
And I think that being able to understand all of those different sectors and actually have gotten your hands dirty, solving problems in those different sectors, and frankly, all over the world, is a unique contribution of skills to bring to bear --
TAPPER: Right.
PATRICK: -- on this very, very ambitious agenda that we have.
TAPPER: But when you see the crowds for Senator Elizabeth Warren from your home Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the crowds for Bernie Sanders from neighboring Vermont, the energy in your party is not with people who are proud capitalists who are looking for practical, pragmatic solutions that bring in Republicans.
[16:35:05]
They are for revolutionary change. That's where the grassroots of the Democratic Party is, right?
PATRICK: And revolutionary change, we shall have, because we've been waiting for it for a long time. Frankly, the anxiety and even anger that folks are feeling in towns and rural communities about the way the economy has kind of kicked them to the curb and moved on and the way opioids have come in to fill the void. And the way their issues, our issues, back issues only at campaign time. That's something I -- that's very familiar to me, from having grown up on the south side of Chicago. That's what we've been feeling there, and in communities like it for a long time.
The opportunity that presents is not for some corporate person to solve the problem. That's not who I am, Jake, and you know that. That is about seeing the opportunity to make big systematic change as a way to bring us back together.
We have a president today, as you well know, who seems to wake up every day looking for division. And replacing that with our own better version of division is not the ultimate solution. Because we need to think beyond defeating President Trump, as critical as that is, to how we create meaningful and lasting change.
And I think the opportunity to do that through a campaign that is about everyone everywhere and not just big crowds and early voting states, and not saying one thing to this group over here and something else to that group over there, so that nobody gets aroused, but that is about an ambitious agenda, that engages people in it, as their agenda, not mine, not my campaign's, but theirs.
That's the way I've campaigned in the past. That's the way I've governed in the past and that's the way I've tried to live my life.
TAPPER: Well, Governor Deval Patrick, welcome to the race, congratulations.
PATRICK: Thank you.
TAPPER: And most importantly, we're so glad that your wife is OK. Thanks so much. We'll see you out there on the campaign trail.
PATRICK: Thank you so much, Jake. I appreciate that. Look forward. Take care.
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