Baker meets re-election – The Boston Globe

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker fights with Jay Gonzalez for a second term as governor.

In a brief and discreet campaign, Republican Baker emphasized the good economic conditions of the state, preached bipartisanship and courtesy, and enacted deceptive laws, particularly to combat the overdose epidemic. opioids.

Gonzalez, a former state budget chief, has described Baker as governor of the status quo, saying Massachusetts should aim higher in these difficult times. He advocated taxing the rich and spending new money on education and transportation. He also tried to link the incumbent to national Republicans.

As in almost every political competition across the country, President Trump, deeply unpopular in Massachusetts, dominated the race for governorship. But Baker, who did not vote for Trump in 2016 and criticized his party leader on several fronts, sought to forge a different identity from the New York billionaire.

While the reality TV star turned president blossomed into an explosive confrontation and incendiary attacks, Baker, former head of the state budget and head of health insurance, said: is leaning on his reputation as a scruffy technocrat.

He liked to be called boring and bent over backwards to avoid any public conflict with the democratically controlled Legislative Assembly. His public statements were an ode to pragmatic governance.

Baker, for example, urged officials on both sides to "commit to common decency in our debate and in our relations with each other and the public" in an important speech of 2018.

Gonzalez, in the hope of tackling the national anti-Trump headwinds, nevertheless flogged the outgoing candidate for his promised support for a Republican ticket including pro-Trump candidates such as Geoff Diehl, the candidate for Senate.

As voters went to the polls on Tuesday, Gonzalez's Twitter account said "vote for Charlie Baker was a vote for Donald Trump" and was linked to an 11-month-old story about Baker's fundraising efforts for the national republicans.

Polls throughout the contest revealed that Baker was leading widely.

Nevertheless, some Democrats, troubled by Trump, voted for the party line even as they spoke warmly of Baker.

"I really like Charlie Baker," said Stephen M. Brewer, a former Democratic senator from Barre. "Charlie deserves no reproach for the idiot we have in the White House, but it is the state of affairs that led me to vote democratically from top to bottom."

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Joshua Miller can be contacted at [email protected]. Matt Stout is available at [email protected].