By Kenneth J. Cooper

The same state that sent the first Tea Party-backed candidate to Congress has made national history by becoming the first to re-elect a black governor.

Despite a down economy and low approval ratings for much of his first term, Governor Deval Patrick triumphed Tuesday in Massachusetts, where Democrats flexed their electoral strength after sleepwalking in January while Scott Brown won a special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat in the US Senate.

Some political analysts had suggested that how Patrick fared would foreshadow President Obama’s prospects when he seeks reelection in 2012, because the two black officeholders have won over white voters with similar appeals for change and togetherness.

In fact, how Patrick withstood a red Republican tide that swept the country does hold lessons for Obama, who campaigned for Patrick in both his gubernatorial campaigns and has on occasion borrowed a line or two from his speeches.

Patrick won it with a powerful combination of the right campaign message and masterful mechanics of getting out the vote on Election Day. The president’s political operatives should study both carefully.

In troubled economic times, Patrick offered a reassuring voice of a better future ahead and a compassionate call for residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to support each other during the passage. His confident tone was reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt’s during the Great Depression.

Patrick’s final TV ad, called “Storm,” features the governor sitting in a comfortable living room, staring straight at viewers. First, he turns the campaign rap of his main opponent, Charlie Baker, an experienced Republican state official and health-care executive, into a heap of overwrought negativity. Baker talked relentlessly about how bad things are in the state, where unemployment, in fact, has not been as high the national jobless rate.

“To listen to Charlie Baker, you’d think everything in Massachusetts is wrong. It’s almost like he’s rooting for bad news,” Patrick says. “Truth is these are tough times for the whole country, and our choices have helped us weather this storm better than most.”

He then cites the state’s recent drop in unemployment and its leadership in student achievement on national standardized tests, the development of clean energy and achievement of nearly-universal health insurance coverage. The 30-second ad concludes with vote-catching expressions of compassion and faith.

“In these times, we should be turning to each other, not on each other,” Patrick says, raising his voice on “to” and “on” for emphasis. “I believe in Massachusetts and I believe in you.”

If other Democrats had as artfully disassembled negative assessments of the nation’s state of affairs, more of them would be returning to Congress and governor’s offices in January.

In his victory speech, Patrick credited voters “for making a strong statement that optimism and effort matter.” He added lines easily adaptable to a presidential campaign: “To paraphrase President Clinton, there is nothing wrong with Massachusetts that can’t be fixed with what’s right about Massachusetts. Tonight, Massachusetts chose to look up and forward, not down and to the past.”

Though Obama won the presidency partly on the strength of a massive effort to turn out voters, especially the young, whoever will be running his reelection campaign can learn from an non-traditional tactic that Massachusetts Democrats adopted. Most campaigns methodically identify voters who support their candidate and carefully target them on Election Day to make sure they do cast ballots. The idea is to channel the time and energy of volunteers and staffers where they can reap the most votes.

In a risky departure from convention, the state Democratic Party canvassed about 1 million homes, knocking on every door and leaving a reminder to vote on doorknobs in entire neighborhoods and apartment complexes. Before the polls closed, a prominent Republican made fun of the broad canvassing, thanking Democrats on a regional cable news network for leaving a printed reminder to vote at his home.

The joke, though, was on Baker and Republicans.

The broad canvassing not only boosted turnout in Democratic redoubts in Boston and other cities, but also significantly cut the margins that Scott Brown had in Republican strongholds in suburbs and smaller towns, according to an analysis of voting patterns in the Boston Globe. The unconventional effort seems to have encouraged more Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents to go to the polls in predominately Republican areas.

Patrick now will have four more years in office. Early next year, not long into his second four-year term, he will become the longest-serving black governor the country has known. The only other ever elected, Douglas Wilder in Virginia, was limited to a single term as the state’s chief executive. David Paterson of New York and P.B.S. Pinchback of Louisiana were elevated to governor to fill a vacancy for less than four years.

Massachusetts does not have term limits, but Patrick made a surprising announcement the morning after the election. Having made history, he said he would not seek a third term.

Kenneth J. Cooper, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is a freelancer based in Boston. He also edits the Trotter Review at the University of Massachusetts Boston.