The Boston Globe conjures with

"The Attorney General's Curse" in today's edition, ergo that ambitious AG's never seem to achieve the corner office in a fair political contest. I think the problem is much broader than that, it seems clear to me that almost all statewide office holders are at a competitive disadvantage if they aspire to the Governorship in a general election. In fact, so far as I can tell the ONLY state wide office that is a reliable path to Gubernatorial Power is...The Office of Lieutenant Governor. The Late Paul Cellucci and Jane "Jingle Money" Swift can both reliably attest to that notion. I don't have a tested hypothesis on this other to note that if you run and win statewide what you pick up in prestige, deliverables and name recognition you lose in terms of a broader public perception of being an "insider". Consider the men who have been elected Governor in my lifetime, Mike Dukakis a Brookline State Rep, Bill Weld, a Federal Prosecutor, Paul Cellucci an incumbent Lt Governor and former State Senator, Jane Swift a Cabinet Jobber, Mitt Romney a man with no substantive public experience at all and Deval Patrick a former Assistant US Attorney General. Meanwhile over that span of time, the democrats nominated two attorney's general for Governor and a State Treasurer all defeated. Moreover at least one additional state Treasurer and another attorney general sought their party's nomination for Governor and came up short. A pattern of sorts emerges, most of the above cited politicians could make a claim (however strained at times) to being outside "the Beacon Hill Culture"....in fact nigh all of them ran at one time or another as a bulwark against said Beacon Hill Culture. So as the state democrats look forward (y'know when the Gloating Stops), they might wanna consider some of the hidden costs to a candidate with an established statewide portfolio...cuz at this point it's all looking like A New Glass Ceiling in State Politics.