Nobody wants to see someone's life ruined over a small-time lapse in judgment.
Charlie Baker
We must have courage to set partisanship aside and embrace the best ideas and solutions no matter which side of the aisle they come from.
I think it's important for people to believe their elections are on the up and up and they aren't being tampered with by anyone, and in this particular instance there's a large body of evidence that at a minimum Russia tried to tamper with our election.
Our obligation to the people we serve is too important to place politics and partisanship before progress and results.
We live in a great state filled with creative, community minded, hard-working, decent people. And what they want from us is opportunity, possibility and hope.
I would argue that the charter schools are really good at building programming and curriculum around the issues and the interests of the kids that they serve.
There are a number of issues that I disagree vehemently with Mr. Trump on. I question whether he's got the temperament to serve as president.
Mitt Romney said many years ago that he thought Russia was the single biggest geopolitical threat to the United States and their presence in a variety of conflicts of one type or another have borne out much of what Mitt Romney said.
When I left Harvard Pilgrim, it had been ranked first in the nation by U.S. News and World Report for customer satisfaction for six years in a row.
The most heart-wrenching responsibility I have as Governor is to meet a family at the airport as they stand silently waiting for the military casket of their loved one to come home.
I'm a pro-choice candidate and I support marriage equality - my brother is actually gay and married. But I'm a pretty hard-headed guy when it comes to the budget and whether you're getting a bang for your buck.
I'm a big believer in what I call demand-style workforce development. It looks at what kinds of skills are in demand out there in the workplace. It takes that approach to skill-building.
I've said for a long time that the governor and the mayors should be far more engaged in this conversation at the federal level. I mean, the consequences and the impact of the federal government's broken immigration policy do not land on the backs of the people in Washington. They just don't.
I rode it a lot before I was governor. I rode the commuter rail for a lot of years, I rode the T for a lot of years, and I talk to people all the time who ride both.
If our elected representatives want to further increase the gas tax, they should have to take a vote each time they do.
I oppose indexing gas tax hikes to inflation.
I don't think any Patriots fan would want anything other than for Tom Brady to stay.
I don't like it necessarily when other people speak for me.
Our Founders worried a lot about the tyranny of the majority. They designed our form of government to provide a loud voice for minority points of view. They hated the idea of unilateral power. And wanted to force advocates and policy makers, through structure and process, to compromise.
The Democrats for the most part want to raise taxes, we don't.
Look I can't get into the minds of people who made decisions to support us or support anybody else. But I can tell you that Scott Lively, a lot of what he says and a lot of what he believes doesn't belong in public discourse.
Balance is a good thing - checks and balances are a good thing.
Success is measured by what we accomplish together.
If you want to be great, you should be great everywhere, not just here and there.
How well we spend education dollars is just as important as how much we spend.
I think I've got a track record and an experience brief that I'll put up against anybody's.
When a mom or dad can stop worrying about where they will lay their head each night they can start climbing back on their feet and out of poverty.
My mission will be to improve life across Massachusetts, including communities and geographies that are seeing a slower economic recovery. Lower and fairer taxes are an important part of creating jobs and accomplishing that goal.
As governor, I would seek to ensure that Massachusetts has access to a balanced portfolio of low-cost energy that doesn't put us at a competitive disadvantage relative to other states, or put an even heavier burden on working families.
When public leaders turn public debates into words of war - 'enemies' 'go to hell' 'attack' - they are enabling the edgiest of their followers to take things into their hands, and unfortunately, some of them do.
This is Massachusetts, we're supposed to be one of the tech centers of the world. We have MIT within walking distance of the state house.
Learning how to communicate to big audiences, and how to frame a message in a way that works in a sound-bite world, that for me is very challenging.
I'm not a virtue signaler.
There are creative ways to create pathways to sufficiency for families in need. To do so, we need to work together to implement good ideas.
When my brothers and I were young, my mom, a Democrat, and my dad, a Republican, used to lead freewheeling discussions at our dinner table. The only rule was paying attention when others were talking, and no interrupting.
When leaders choose to burn bridges instead of build them, they sacrifice their ability to do their jobs.
Politics and public life are not for the faint of heart. It has been and always will be a noisy and cantankerous place.
Competition in politics is just as important as competition in everything else.
There's value in checks and balances. And there's value in having independence in the governor's office with respect to the legislature.
I'm a very big believer that the primary focus for any organization at any point in time should always be smarter, better, faster.
One of the advantages of getting elected governor when you're 58 instead of 38 is you have some mileage on you and part of that means some history and some relationships with people who have spent a fair amount of their career in the public and in the private sector.
I've said many times that people are policy. And to be truly successful in any big organization you need to put people into jobs where they have relevant experience, relevant subject-matter expertise and the capacity to actually perform.
You just can't get surprised when you get surprised, because weird stuff just comes over the transom all the time, and it's not necessarily anything that you've planned for or anticipated.
The thing I would say is governments have the tendency to over-promise and under-perform. So the over-promise part ends up sounding very aspirational. But it's the performance part that ultimately people feel every day and read about. And my goal is to make sure, whatever it is we aspire to, that we deliver on.
I think people are kind of tired of the really amped-up rhetoric that passes for a lot of political dialogue, and they appreciate the fact that that's not the way we are participating in this process.
I do see great opportunity to make reforms to our tax code, making it simpler, fairer and removing corporate loopholes.
We need to root out the waste and abuse that is rampant in our state agencies. When we do that and grow the economy, we will be able to fund the vital programs and services we need.
I'm not going to raise taxes.
I think our agenda is very aspirational.
I'm a big-tent Republican.
