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**DECEMBER 1, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Reverberations From Charlie Baker's Exit

Will a progressive Democrat at last become governor of the bluest state?
Will Baker challenge Elizabeth Warren?

After keeping everyone guessing, America's last liberal Republican
governor has decided not to run for re-election in 2022. There are other
non-Trumper Republican governors, in Maryland, Vermont, and Arizona, but
Baker epitomizes what used to be called a Rockefeller Republican. And as
a social progressive and fiscal conservative, Baker isn't even that
liberal.

Now what? For a state that reliably sends progressives to the House and
Senate, Massachusetts has had trouble electing Democratic governors.
Except for Deval Patrick, who served two terms between 2007 and 2015,
the last five governors have been Republicans. One reason is that the
state legislature is filled with corporate- and machine-Democrat hacks;
the closer to home you look, the less appealing is the Democratic Party.

One good outcome is that Maura Healey, the Commonwealth's talented and
progressive attorney general, is now likely to run for governor and win.
And Andrea Campbell, an African American former city councilor who was
in the Boston mayor's race (and would have made a superb mayor), could
well be the next AG.

Baker is a youthful 65. What will he do now? Some observers think he
will challenge Elizabeth Warren, who is up in 2022. The theory is that
Warren, as a national progressive superstar, hasn't paid quite enough
attention to home base-she didn't even carry Massachusetts in the
2020 presidential primary-and some local industries, like biotech, are
unhappy with her.

I think Warren would clean Baker's clock. Precisely because she is
such a critical national leader, progressives would mobilize for her in
droves.

It reminds me of the 1994 Senate race, when Mitt Romney took on a
supposedly vulnerable Ted Kennedy, Warren's predecessor in that seat
and as national liberal icon. Kennedy blew Romney away, winning by 18
points.

Romney did eventually make it to the Senate, from Utah. Baker doesn't
have that option.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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