LOWELL, Mass. (AP) – Democrats bashed Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, embraced same-sex marriage and got a closer look at their two declared gubernatorial candidates during the party’s recent annual state convention.

The gathering of Democratic activists comes more than a year ahead of the 2006 statewide elections. Democrats, who have lost every gubernatorial contest since 1990, are desperately hoping to reverse that trend.

The declared candidates, Attorney General Tom Reilly and former federal civil rights enforcer Deval Patrick, urged the party to reach beyond its base. Each also staked out his own political terrain as they addressed the delegates.

Patrick criticized Romney’s opposition to a recently passed embryonic stem cell bill, his support for the death penalty and his call for a speedy income tax cut.

“There are lots of other issues for us to deal with other than a death penalty we don’t have and gay marriage, which the Supreme Judicial Court has said is legal,” said Patrick, who was President Clinton’s chief civil rights enforcer and got perhaps the most rousing response of any speaker.

Reilly, who opposed same-sex marriage but now says it’s time for the state to move on, urged delegates to appeal to independent and Republican voters to expand the party’s base.

“We need to broaden the party, we need to reach to people who have left the party, we need to reach out to independents and say, ‘You are Democrats too,’” Reilly said.

A third potential candidate, Secretary of State William Galvin, blasted Romney as the latest in a series of “dilettante Republican governors” who lose interest in Massachusetts once they are elected to the state’s highest office.

Delegates also heard from Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, who warned Democratic candidates against launching a scorched-earth campaign against each other during next year’s governor’s race.

“We do not want to destroy ourselves before we get to the September primary,” the former Vermont governor said.

Dean used the convention to lob rhetorical grenades at the national GOP, including embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

“I think Tom Delay ought to go back to Houston, where he can serve his jail sentence down there,” Dean said. “We need a country … where we respect other people’s views even when they disagree with us. But we need to stop this ugly, nasty dialogue that is coming from the right wing of the American Republican Party.”

DeLay faces an ethics investigation about whether he accepted trips paid for by lobbyists, despite a House prohibition. Delay has said he is ready to defend himself. A message left for a Delay spokesperson wasn’t immediately returned.

The biggest unifying message of the convention was a scathing review of Romney’s tenure in the Statehouse corner office.

Reilly called the Republican governor “the most partisan, divisive and ineffective governor I’ve seen in 25 years of public life.” Patrick criticized Romney as “a governor who calls for the death penalty and in the same instant cuts local aid so that we can’t afford to pay for the cops we need on the streets.”

Republicans dismissed the criticism, calling the Democrats out-of-touch liberals and arguing the state has thrived under Romney.

“For three liberals like Tom Reilly and Deval Patrick and Bill Galvin, cutting taxes is a waste of time, but it’s what the people want and in these strong economic times it’s something we should deliver,” said state Republican Party director Tim O’Brien. “They’ve said if you think that marriage is just between a man and a woman there is no place for you in our party.”

The party used the convention to formally endorse the SJC’s ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, which took effect in Massachusetts nearly a year ago.

That support may not be as universal among Democrats as the party’s platform suggests. When the entire platform was put to a voice vote in the partially filled Tsongas Arena, a majority backed the platform while a smattering of “no’s” rippled through the auditorium.

The party also approved an amendment to the platform calling for the end to the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and the setting of a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops.