Governor's Race: Galvin Out; Patrick, Reilly to Schedule Steel Cage Match

. . . OK, that part about the steel cage match isn't true . . . yet. But Secretary of State William Galvin, whose heart never really seemed in the race, is now officially out of contention for the governor's job, which will be open in 2006 assuming Mitt Romney decides to make a run for the White House (and who knows, really? Yesterday, after all, he weighed in on a matter of pressing concern to all Commonwealth residents, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). That leaves former-Clinton-administration-assistant-Attorney-General/corporate-lawyer Deval Patrick and Attorney General Tom Reilly to battle it out for the Democratic nomination.

Although Reilly has a wicked-huge war chest ready for campaigning, the Globe reports today that Patrick has raised money at a faster rate in the last five months, although he still has only about an eighth of the cash that Reilly has. Being a fan of close races, Bostonist would like to see Patrick make a go of it, but we have our doubts: Call us cynical, but Bostonist thinks that racism, though no longer of the overt, impaling-people-with-flagpoles variety, runs deep in our state, and that any liberal black candidate would face an uphill battle (so far as we can tell, there has been only one black person elected to statewide elective office in Massachusetts, Republican Edward Brooke, who was Attorney General and then Senator, and he left the Senate in 1979). Add to that the fact that Reilly has more money and is about as connected as a politician can get around here, and you can see why Patrick has a tough row to hoe. Hopefully, the primary will be close and prove us wrong.

The more immediate question, though, is how Theo Epstein's inevitable entry in the race will affect things.

Picture: The State House, where governors who don't have their eye on the White House can frequently be found. There once was a store in Weymouth that sold paintings of the State House, like the one above, framed with large mirrors. Sadly, that store has closed.