Former two-term Massachusetts governor and Bain Capital executive Deval Patrick is set to announce his entrance into the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
Patrick has told senior party officials that he will film an introductory video and enter the race before the Friday deadline to appear on the ballot in New Hampshire, according to a New York Times report.
Patrick initially declined to run in December 2018 after meeting with former president Barack Obama. He was urged to run by several members of Obama's inner circle, but cited the "cruelty" of the electoral process and the likely strain on his wife Diane Patrick, who was at the time undergoing treatment for cancer.
The investment firm manager has reportedly reconsidered his decision in light of the contentious and divided Democratic field. Patrick follows another latecomer, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who took the first steps to enter the race after frontrunner and establishment candidate Joe Biden began to flounder in the polls.
Patrick currently manages Bain Capital’s $390 million Double Impact Fund. Patrick, a 2012 Obama surrogate, refused to join in Democrats' attacks on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's career at Bain during the 2012 race. "They [Bain] have a role in the private economy, and I’ve got a lot of friends there … on both sides of the aisle," Patrick said at the time. "I think the Bain strategy has been distorted in some of the public discussions."
In a 2018 interview before his initial decision not to run, Patrick called himself a "capitalist," defended his work at Bain, and dismissed concerns that he would be met with skepticism by liberal and socialist Democrats.
"As a black man in lots of settings where I was not, quote, 'supposed to be,' you got to know that I'm accustomed to skepticism," Patrick told CNN. "And I understand that a lot of people in a lot of settings have a bad habit of looking first at the cartoon of somebody."