The Democratic presidential primary’s freshest face, former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick fired leaders of the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry in 2014 for trying to register Patrick’s brother in-law for a 1993 California rape conviction.

Earlier this year, Bernard Sigh, Patrick’s ex-brother in-law was sentenced to eight years in prison for raping his ex-wife in a 2017 attack, three years after the head of the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry Board rose the issue of registering Sigh as a sex offender to Patrick for a prior spousal rape conviction in California. In response, Patrick sacked the official in an effort to avoid having a family member register as a sex offender, calling it a “family matter,” and therefore “marital” rape, according to Stanford Professor Michele Dauber.

The victim in the most recent rape said that she came home and found Patrick's brother in law hiding in the closet. He stalking, kidnapped, and raped her. She said that she hoped for a long sentence because she would spend her life in fear if he was out.https://t.co/CuqbmHVcXr — Michele Dauber (@mldauber) November 14, 2019

Patrick became the latest candidate to officially enter the 2020 Democratic presidential contest this week with less than three months away from the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses after nine major candidates have already dropped out.

The former Massachusetts governor has less than one month to meet the Democratic National Committee’s qualifying thresholds to earn a spot on the December debate stage, where only six of the field’s 19 candidates including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have qualified so far.

Patrick’s late entrance in the race showcases Democrats’ concerns that no candidates currently in the race can pick up the necessary momentum needed to oust President Donald Trump next fall. The field’s frontrunner and former Vice President Joe Biden is plagued by scandals involving the Biden family’s shady dealings with Ukraine being brought to light by the Democrats’ partisan impeachment inquiry, while Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont are running on far-left platforms proving difficult to sell to American voters.

Patrick, 63, served as governor of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2013 and has since worked in the private sector at Bain Capital and in media as a CBS contributor.