It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town

The shotgun wedding between Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker and lieutenant governor hopeful Karyn Polito had its engagement announcement in Monday’s Boston Globe.

Running mate issue gets thornier for Charlie Baker

Karyn E. Polito, the former Republican legislator who lost a 2010 run for state treasurer, is poised to announce her candidacy for lieutenant governor this week, a move that puts GOP gubernatorial favorite Charlie Baker in a difficult spot as he ponders a potential running mate.

Polito, a 47-year old Shrewsbury resident, is expected to declare as early as Tuesday that she will seek the nomination for the second spot on the 2014 gubernatorial ticket, according to several state Republicans with knowledge of her plans.

Baker is expected to lead the ticket, and Polito’s candidacy would pose a politically ticklish question for him: whether to try to control the makeup of his ticket, as he successfully did in his 2010 run for governor, or to leave the decision to voters.

Having Polito as a running mate could be both an asset and a potential liability.

And etc.

The GOPpy couple tied the knot in today’s edition of our stately local broadsheet.

Charlie Baker picks Karyn Polito as running mate

Nod to conservatives may also help him with women voters

SHREWSBURY — Charlie Baker, the leading Republican candidate for governor, named former state representative Karyn Polito as his running mate Tuesday, presenting voters with a unified ticket fully 11 months before the gubernatorial election.

Polito’s selection serves as an overture to party conservatives, among whom she is popular, and as an effort to raise Baker’s standing among female voters, a constituency he lost heavily when he ran for the corner office in 2010.

Her hometown of Shrewsbury also bolsters Baker’s candidacy in Worcester County, a stronghold for Republicans in recent elections.

Polito, in her 2010 bid for state treasurer, racked up more votes than Baker did in the three-way race for governor. As she announced her candidacy at a Shrewsbury diner on Tuesday, she said she wants voters to see her as a “mom, a business owner, and an optimist.”

Leave it to the Boston Herald, though, to crash the reception.

Insider: Pick not Charlie’s first choice

Former State Rep. Karyn Polito wasn’t Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker’s first choice — or even his second, according to a source who said Baker considered several other female GOP running mates and even former Attorney General Tom Reilly before settling on Polito.

“It’s not uncommon, when candidates look for running mates, that you get further down the list than you hope to,” said a Republican source close to the Baker campaign. “Discussions were had with a lot of other people, and there were a lot who weren’t interested.”

Karyn Polito: mom, business owner, optimist . . . second runner-up. 

According to the piece by Hillary Chabot and Matt Stout, “Baker . . . reached out to Mary Connaughton, a former GOP candidate for auditor, who told the Herald two weeks ago that she turned down the offer because she is happy with her job at the Pioneer Institute.”

Finishing behind Connaughton is one thing, but Tom Reilly? Really?

Today’s feisty local tabloid also has a Joe Battenfeld piece on the Two-Time Charlie/Karyn Enough knot-tying, along with a pro & con honeymoon preview.

(Skunk at the Garden Party honors go to the Globe’s Scot Lehigh, who says Massachusetts should tear the sheets and dump the lieutenant governor’s office altogether, which will happen about the same time Baker and Polito adopt Tim Murray).

The hardreading staff gives that couple 11 months.