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.

Surprise....

Suzanne Bump was re-elected as State Auditor by a bare 57% of the vote. :) Well grudging congrats to our Governor Elect, Charlie Baker, we are about to find out how good a school of statecraft is the Swampscott Board of Selectmen. As for what happened last night, I'm honestly surprised Coakley hung in as long as she did and drove it down to under two percentage points or roughly 36,000 votes statewide. She had the Very Gods of Olympus and the Editorial Board of the Boston Globe against her....let us not forget that. Otherwise this was the Closest Gubernatorial election since 1998 when Cellucci beat Harshbarger. Moreover the polling data on this one seemed very faulty most of the polls trended towards Baker over the last two weeks and yet his final tally was a bare plurality and 1.4 % margin. The democratic primary had this same problem as well I suspect there are some polling models out there that are past their expiration date. The precise modalities will have to wait on better more reliable numbers and keener wits than mine, but if I had to hazard a hypothesis I'm gonna guess Charlie's winning formula was Ticket Splitting Independent Women + The Endorsement of the Boston Globe + Evan Falchuk (who carried off 62,000 votes that Martha desperately needed). The whole independent women thing, is pure conjecture on my part, the final polling numbers will confirm or deny it. Nonetheless clearly this was a cohort Baker was obsessed with getting at all costs up to and including popping Midol in front of the cameras. This is also a cadre famous for splitting tickets in droves. As for the Boston Globe's endorsement, clearly that has some serious utility in a close race as when applied to a GOP candidate it instantly confers "Republican Moderate" status...Said endorsement is conversely almost useless and likely a burden to any democrat occupying statewide office who aspires to the Governorship. Lastly Evan Falchuk ran up some good numbers last night, mostly in the form of disaffected independent radicals....in the past I've been known to bemoan this cohort's inability to join any broad coalition against the GOP. However over time I've come to the conclusion that this is a somewhat vengeful bunch whose sheer hatred of the the two party system makes most of them "ungettable from the git-go" for any serious democratic candidate. In short they LIKE skewing elections, it suits their vaguely Leninist notions of "chaos and or reaction all benefits me". Well be that as it may, the rest of the democratic ticket did very well indeed and the GOP's alleged surge never materialized with respect to the Great and General Court. As for Baker I have strong doubts of his alleged managerial acumen or his patience with State House milieu....to his credit he has been handed a relatively robust state economy but this is Charlie Baker we are talking about he could as always screw up a two car funeral.