Marty Walsh is weighing a run for Massachusetts governor

BOSTON — Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is weighing whether to return home to Massachusetts and run for governor next year, according to two sources with knowledge of his deliberations.

A number of Democrats have called Walsh about the race after Massachusetts’ Republican Gov. Charlie Baker announced on Wednesday that he was declining to run for a third term. Allies of the former Boston mayor are also telling fellow Massachusetts Democrats that he is considering running, according to two additional sources.

Asked if Walsh is ruling the race out, spokespeople for the Labor secretary did not respond to multiple emails, calls, voicemails and text messages. The White House declined to comment.

While sources say that Walsh is processing a potential run and is not leaning any way yet, his chief of staff Daniel Koh is seriously considering entering the race for lieutenant governor, according to two sources familiar with his thinking. Should both choose to mount bids, they could potentially run as a ticket.

Walsh would start the race with $5.1 million in the bank leftover from his mayoral reelection campaign which he dropped out of to join the Biden administration. He has high name identification in the state and has not hid the fact that he has future political ambitions there. Days before he resigned as mayor, he gave $250,000 dollars to the state party.

But he could face tough competition in a Democratic primary. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey was considering running even before Baker made his announcement Wednesday. She has $3.3 million on hand, but could use that to run for attorney general again.

Democratic strategists in the state note that Walsh has no guarantee of a clean primary should he skip running for governor this cycle in favor of running statewide in a future contest. If Senate seats open up in 2024 or 2026, there are prominent Democrats in the state like Rep. Ayanna Pressley who may choose to run and be even tougher to beat.

Baker had been raising money for a potential reelection bid, which made his announcement a surprise to Democratic officials and lawmakers across the state. The governor told reporters Wednesday that he spoke with Walsh ahead of his announcement. "It was basically just a conversation to give him a heads up if he hadn’t heard about it [already],” he said. “Most of our conversation was what I would describe as a little bit of a series of humorous anecdotes about moments that we worked together on. There was no conversation about any of that."

Biden chose Walsh, former mayor of Boston, to helm his Labor Department given his ties to organized labor — Walsh is a former trade union president whose nomination was backed by the AFL-CIO — and his personal relationship with the president. Not only did Biden speak at the mayor’s 2017 inauguration, but the two have been spotted in Boston at the anniversary of the 2013 marathon bombings, as well as at worker rallies and out to dinner.

Walsh went on to become one of few Biden nominees who enjoyed GOP support during the confirmation process. Even with his union background, his business-friendly track record as mayor won him the backing of business groups, many of which viewed him as a pragmatist..

But drama from his Boston years followed him to the Beltway, when accusations arose earlier this year that Walsh had appointed Dennis White as police commissioner despite knowledge of multiple domestic abuse allegations against him. The uproar — one of the first tastes of scandal for the Biden administration — died down slowly amid silence from even Walsh’s most fervent supporters.

Since then, Walsh has spent most of 2021 pushing the administration’s Build Back Better plan to the rest of the country, traveling from state to state to meet with local officials, workforce development boards, union leaders and others in an effort to generate support for Biden’s $1.7 trillion social spending package. He visited the Port of Los Angeles on Wednesday, where he delivered remarks on supply chain issues and how “Biden’s economic plan has produced a historic recovery.”

He also made a trip to join striking Kellogg’s workers in Pennsylvania in October — one of the only instances in which a sitting Cabinet member has visited a picket line. Workers who make Rice Krispies, Raisin Bran, Froot Loops, Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes were on strike at Kellogg’s cereal plants over wage and benefit negotiations and the company’s threats to move jobs to Mexico.