Patrick, Murray rally to energize Dems; Predicting several close races, candidates call for voter turnout.

PositionLOCAL NEWS

Byline: Steven Foskett

WORCESTER - Saying he didn't hide when the national economy soured, Gov. Deval L. Patrick told Democratic supporters last night that he instead kept moving the state forward.

"We didn't cut and run like a whole bunch of folks; we didn't say well all we do now is hunker down and trim our ambitions for you. No, we chose to invest in education, and in health care, and in job creation," the incumbent Democrat told the group of about 200 supporters at a get-out-the-vote rally at Coral Seafood on Shrewsbury Street.

Most of the latest polling on the governor's race has Mr. Patrick in either a statistical dead-heat with or a slight lead over his Republican opponent, Charles D. Baker Jr. The governor, along with Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray and several other local and statewide Democratic candidates, said that Mr. Baker, if elected, would immediately start slashing jobs and halting progress his administration has made.

"I've seen him stand there for the last several months and run down Massachusetts, and seize on every bit of negative information to drag you down and divide us, when we are at a time when we need to be turning to each other, not on each other, and how we lift this commonwealth up, not how we tear it down," he said.

Mr. Patrick said he's not done, and hasn't declared victory yet. He said he has been thinking a lot lately about generational responsibility. He said he's going to continue to try to leave the state in better shape for the next generation.

Talking about how he met recently with a group of unemployed people in Quincy who get together to support one another, he said they are scared; they don't talk about putting off their vacations - they talk about how they are going to get groceries.

"In America," Mr. Patrick said. "In some fundamental way, they're asking whether the American dream itself is up for grabs. I think that's worth fighting for."

Touching on the polls, Mr. Murray said they all show that the race is within the margin of error, even after Mr. Baker got off to a good start in the campaign earlier this year.

"Six to nine months ago, nobody gave...

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