On a night when Democrats took back the House, and now seem likely to claim the Senate as well, few eyes were turned to reliably blue Massachusetts -- where Democrats control the entire Congressional delegation, Ted Kennedy extended his 44-year run in the Senate, and the governorship reverted to Democrats. But Deval Patrick's triumph to become the nation's second black governor, after Virginia's Doug Wilder, shouldn't be overlooked.

Patrick ran one of the best races of the year, defeating a formidable Democratic primary field including the state's attorney general. He defeated his Republican opponent, Lt. Governor Kerry Healy, by a stunning 20 percent. It's easy to see Massachusetts as a liberal redoubt -- and in many ways, it is -- but that hardly made Patrick's win an easy one.

First, the state's racial history isn't so pure. Anyone who remembers Boston's busing crisis in the mid-1970s -- flicked at most recently in Marin Scorcese's The Departed -- would be pretty amazed to see Patrick win so handily. Second, the state has had a slew of GOP governors--including for the last 16 years--who are seen as a vital balance to the state's one-party rule. Democrats don't walk to the governorship here.

On top of which: this was Patrick's first election! He grew up poor in Chicago, won a scholarship to the Milton Academy in Massachusetts and went on to career in corporate and civil rights law. He led a voting rights suit against Gov. Bill Clinton in the 80s which was settled and which led to a long-time friendship between the two men. After the famed Lani Guinier episode (when Clinton's first nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department was pressured to withdraw because of her rather exotic writings on voting rights), Patrick stepped in. He's been general counsel of Coca-Cola and Texaco.

His inclusive campaign this cycle -- its slogan: Together We Can -- was a tour de force, much of it the product of David Axelrod, the Chicago-based political consultant who happens to work for Barack Obama as well. He must be one very happy consultant today.