BOSTON -- Throughout the past several months, NewsCenter 5 has brought you the positions of the candidates who are running in this year's election.

As good as debates, position papers and daily news reports are, a good sense of the person who is the candidate can still be missing.

To that end, NewsCenter 5 continues a tradition dating back to 1990 taking you to the homes of the candidates for a more personal conversation.

NewsCenter 5's Natalie Jacobson sat down with Deval Patrick at his Milton, Mass., home.

"We have lived in this house for most of the last 17 years. We bought it falling down," Deval Patrick said.

"Deval's mother has lived with us on and off, but mostly on, since we were married," Diane Patrick said.

The Patricks have two children. Sarah is a junior at New York University, and Katherine is a senior at St. Andrew's School in Delaware.

"When I met Deval, I called him from my office, and he was already home and said he was just cooking a little something. 'Come on over,' I could join him, and the little something he was cooking for himself was chicken marsala. Who cooks chicken marsala for himself?" Diane Patrick said.

"A man's got to eat," Deval Patrick said.

"You are both lawyers. That could be interesting," Jacobson said.

"Diane's sister say we argue in the most orderly way she has ever seen; you know, each of us waits until the other finishes," Deval Patrick said.

"In a way, your background would almost suggest that you might have been better suited to run for attorney general. Did you ever think about that?" Jacobson said.

"No. No. I don't mean to say that it isn't a worthy and important position, but only the governor sets the agenda. I want the agenda to be ambitious. I want it to be long-term," Deval Patrick said.

"What does Deval Patrick do if two years from now, a new president of the United States calls and says, 'Deval, I want you to come in and be my United States attorney general, or something else, secretary of whatever. What do you do?" Jacobson said.

"I say Mr. or Ms. President, thank you for the call, but I am still hard at work here in Massachusetts," Deval Patrick said.

"So, that's a promise that you stay for four years no matter what?" Jacobson said.

"Oh, yes," Deval Patrick said. "Life is what happens when you are making plans. I am not running for this job to get some other job."

"Tax and spend. What in your opinion must get done, and what are you willing to sacrifice?" Jacobson said.

"Listen, you know, that all gets works out in the crucible of negotiation. If you are asking the question: Am I willing to cut something to pay for something else? Listen, I've had to do that in business. I've had to do that in government. I know how to do it. I make those decisions when it is time to make them. Why pick fights now?" Deval Patrick said.

"Could you promise voters that you won't seek more money from the taxpayers to fix the Big Dig?" Jacobson said.

"Listen, I could make that promise. I'd like to, but it's a hollow one because I don't know yet what all the details will be," Deval Patrick said.

"At Milton Academy, I read some of your black classmates called you an Oreo -- black on the outside and white on the inside," Jacobson said.

"They called me nice things, too. Remember this is the late '60s and early '70s, and there is a lot of racial tension in this area and all over the country. Black people and white people were still trying to figure out how to be at ease with each other. The amount of energy, I think, that a lot of us as black kids felt putting whites at ease with us before you could do anything else, before you could have a conversation -- was something that I think took a lot of energy out of us and just made some people quite resentful. It was the effort. But, I like people. I am interested in people, and it wasn't so hard for me to build bridges and to love people who were different from me, and I think that that was frustrating for some of my buddies who were black," Deval Patrick said.

"Your support of Benjamin LeGuer -- a convicted rapist -- has been part of this campaign. You supported a man, as I understand you felt he didn't get a fair trial. Without rehashing the give-and-take of the campaign, what did you, Deval Patrick, take from this experience?" Jacobson said.

"I hope that every time, every time that somebody raises a serious question about the fairness of a trial or fairness of any government preceding them, that I'm in a position to do what I can -- even in a limited way I did in the LeGuer case," Deval Patrick said.

"So, you're comfortable you did the right thing, and if the circumstance presented itself you'd do it again?" Jacobson said.

"Yes," Deval Patrick said.

"After graduation from Harvard, you spent a year in the Sudan?" Jacobson said.

"It was as remote a place as you can imagine -- five days across the Nubian Desert to get there -- no phone, no mail service for months. I was out of touch. I think I came away from that feeling incredibly strong. There is a resilience and a self-confidence, I think, that comes from that that makes it so much easier for me to think about new things, about taking on new challenges and not feeling that they are beyond my capacity," Deval Patrick said.

Click here to watch the full interview.