Return To Politics
Baker ran for the board of selectmen of Swampscott, Massachusetts, in 2004, and won by a "landslide". While on the board, he was noted for a businessman-like approach to local issues; his fellow selectmen described him as "low key" and budget-oriented. After serving three years, he chose not to run for re-election in 2007.
In mid-2005, there were indications that Governor Mitt Romney would not seek re-election in the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial election. Baker was widely considered a top contender to take Romney's place as the Republican candidate. Analysts wrote that Baker was unlikely to defeat Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, who had already announced her candidacy. Healey was the 2–1 favorite among Republican voters in a Boston Globe poll and had much stronger financial backing. Furthermore, ethics guidelines at Harvard Pilgrim prevented Baker from carrying out any political fundraising while he held an executive position. After "giving serious consideration" to the idea, he announced in August 2005 that he would not run, citing the burden it would be on his family and the difficulty of campaigning against Healey.
In late 2006, Baker was named to a Budget and Finance working group for incoming Governor Deval Patrick's transition committee. In 2008, he joined the Public Advisory Board of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics (NHIOP) at Saint Anselm College.
Read more about this topic: Charles D. Baker, Jr.
Famous quotes containing the words return to, return and/or politics:
“At twelve, the disintegration of afternoon
Began, the return to phantomerei, if not
To phantoms. Till then, it had been the other way:
One imagined the violet trees but the trees stood green,
At twelve, as green as ever they would be.
The sky was blue beyond the vaultiest phrase.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“... in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again.”
—Anne Frank (1929–1945)
“Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.”
—Peggy Noonan (b. 1950)