What is the state of the state? Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker will address that very question in his annual, and final, State of the Commonwealth on Tuesday evening.
The address last year was anything but normal. He delivered it from his office rather than the House chamber, and it didn't lay out an ambitious agenda.
Matt Murphy from the State House News Service tells us what he expects to hear from Baker this year.
Matt Murphy, State House News Service: Yeah, this one won't be exactly normal either, but a little more like the traditional speeches that we've grown accustomed to watching. The governor won't be delivering this one in the House chamber, either, where lawmakers, lobbyists, past elected officials and members of the judicial branches and other branches of government often crowd in and listen to the governor. Instead, he'll be at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston on Tuesday night.
And this being the governor's last speech and the fact that he said that he was not going to run for reelection in 2022, so that he could focus on the job and focus on getting the state through this pandemic, I expect we'll hear a good amount about where he thinks the state stands in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and the efforts underway to continue to try and control this surge of the omicron variant and keep kids in schools and other efforts to help businesses and the like.
I think we will also probably hear some about the governor's final year agenda. We know he's been working on a health care bill. He teased that last year and said it could be coming early this year. That is something that we could get some details on this week, along with the annual budget that he intends to file a day later on Wednesday. This is his final spending plan for the state that he will put before the Legislature. We could see some teases for what that contains.
And to the extent that the governor wants to address politics, I think in the past and perhaps on Tuesday night, he has used this speech to deride the sort of divisive nature of politics that he sees at both the national level and to a lesser degree in the state, and push for more of the brand of what he sees as his politics — a more collaborative style. Those are some of the themes I think we'll be looking for on Tuesday night.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: Well, the race for the next governor is becoming clearer by the day. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has now joined the Democratic race for governor. What was the reaction Healey's announcement got from Beacon Hill?
Well, because a lot of people were expecting Healey to get in and because she is such a big name in Democratic politics and on Beacon Hill, there was already a well of support there for her and her potential candidacy. So she enjoys a good amount of support on the Hill among elected leaders.
But there are others who have gone to her colleague, Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz, who have worked with Chang-Diaz, who respect her. She got in earlier. She has been campaigning and she has a good deal of support as well from elected leaders.
This is far from over and something Healey acknowledged last week, even though she perhaps does enter the field as the favorite. We are months away from the September 6 primary and a lot can happen between now and then.
Healey became AG when the previous one, Martha Coakley, ran for governor instead of for reelection. Coakley, of course, lost to Baker in 2014, but then Healey took the attorney general race. And now with Healey going for governor, who do you see looking to fill her shoes as the state's top prosecutor?
You know, interestingly here, as we waited for Healey to make her decision, there were two candidates already waiting in the wings who had basically announced, that said, if she runs for governor, then I will run for her seat for attorney general.
One is Quentin Palfrey, former Obama administration official who has worked in the Attorney General's Office in Massachusetts before and was the 2018 nominee for lieutenant governor for the Democrats in Massachusetts, running with Jay Gonzalez at the top of the ticket.
The other is Shannon Liss-Riordan, prominent labor attorney who briefly ran for U.S. Senate on the Democratic side of the ticket when Ed Markey was up for reelection, in that last cycle. She ultimately dropped out before getting to the primary and didn't continue with that race. But she is an interesting candidate, particularly in a year when the ballot question regarding employee rights for app-based drivers on things like Uber and Lyft is going to be a major issue on the campaign trail as voters have to decide that in November.
