Charlie Baker
· Republican
· Health Care Corporation CEO & Ex-Gubernatorial Aide
· Lieutenant Governor: Richard Tisei
· Platform: Fiscal Conservatism and Social Liberalism
· Majors: BA In English, Harvard University. MBA in Management, Northwestern University.
· Supports Gay Marriage and Abortion Rights, Expanding Gambling.
· Main Focus: Create jobs.
His father worked in both Reagan and Nixon governments. In 1992, he was appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services of Massachusetts. He later served as Secretary of Administration and Finance under Weld and his successor Paul Cellucci.
After working in government for eight years, Baker left to become CEO of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates and later Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, a non-profit health benefits company. During this time he served three years as a selectman of Swampscott, Massachusetts, and considered a run for governor in 2006. He stepped down in July 2009 to run for Governor of Massachusetts.
He was one of the main architects of the Big Dig traffic project design plan.
In 1999 he was named CEO of Harvard Vanguard’s parent company and saved it from losing almost 90 million dollars. During his period as CEO, Harvad Vanguard’s company earned recognition from the National Committee for Quality Assurance as its choice for America's Best Health Plan for five straight years.
Baker is running as a social liberal (in favor of gay marriage and abortion rights) but a fiscal conservative, stressing job creation as his primary focus.[20][21] His campaign is centered on "Baker's Dozen", a plan outlining 13 areas of state government reform. Baker's campaign says that his plan, which includes consolidation of government, welfare reform, and restructuring of public employee pension and retirement benefits, will lower state expenditures by over $1 billion.[25] Baker, a former member of the Massachusetts Board of Education, supports increasing the number of charter, magnet, and alternative schools. Believing that education is a "civil right", he also hopes to close the educational achievement gap among underprivileged and minority students.[26] At a town hall meeting in Chilmark, Massachusetts, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Baker voiced his opposition to the proposed Cape Wind project supported by Governor Deval Patrick.
Deval Patrick
· Democratic
· First Afro-American becoming Governor of Massachusetts
· Lieutenant Governor: Tim Murray
· U.S Assistant Attorney General during Bill Clinton’s Government
· Studies: English And American Education, Milton Academy & Harvard College. Law, Harvard University.
· Fromer President Of Harvard Aid Bureau.
· Supports: Environmental Care, Gay Marriage, Public Free Education, Expanding Gambling in MA, Health Reform.
· Opposes: Death Penalty.
In 1994, Clinton nominated Patrick Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, subsequently confirmed by the United States Senate. As the head of the Civil Rights Division, Patrick worked on issues including racial profiling, police misconduct, fair lending enforcement, human trafficking, prosecution of hate crime, abortion clinic violence and discrimination based on gender and disability. He had a crucial role defining South Africa’s Civil Rights after the apartheid period.
His tenure was not without controversy. Federal affirmative action policy was under judicial and political review, and Patrick defended Clinton's policy. Patrick also enforced federal laws concerning treatment of incarcerated criminals; to the extent that one warden called him a "zealot."[7] He has also been criticized for his role in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals case Piscataway v. Taxman, wherein, due to budget constraints, a white woman named Sharon Taxman was laid off rather than a black woman of allegedly "identical" qualifications, because the school wanted diversity on its teaching staff.
He was elected as Massachusetts Governor in 2006. During the first years of his administration a lot of controversies was created when he spent almost 100.000 dollars redecorating his residency and hiring a personal assistant to her wife. Many economical measures taken by Patrick also produced the reducing of financial aid to many towns and cities in Massachusetts.
However, he has made an exceptional job improving Massachusetts’ public education and he even proposed to make the upper education in the State Colleges and Universities free to all High School Students.
He supports gay marriage, and many other ways of social liberalism, he has also made a Health Care Reform in MA, which has allowed to almost 97% of the people in this state to have a Health Insurance.
Patrick has also expended a lot of money in some ecologist measures, especially in promoting the construction of Cape Wind, a wind farm in Cape Cod.
He also supported the construction of three Resort-Style Casinos in MA, arguing that it would create gross revenue of $ 2 billion for the state and also about 20.000 permanent jobs. The measure was approved in mid-2010 but the construction hasn’t started yet.
Immigration, he supports some measures to cut the illegal immigration in MA, but he also supports these people’s right to have public education in high schools and state universities and also to have a driver’s license.
