When Stephen Brewer decided to call it a career in politics in 2014, the Barre Democrat said he looked forward to teaching himself how to play the banjo.
Brewer, who had just come out on the losing end of a battle to become the next Senate president, was 65 — the same age Gov. Charlie Baker is now — and ready to write his next chapter.
Fast-forward more than seven years, and there was Baker this week, admiring the guitar selection at Needham Music, where he was promoting the importance of shopping locally this holiday season.
“I always said that if I ever retire, I want to learn how to play the bass,” Baker remarked casually.
Whether it will end by choice, by force or not at all in 2022, Baker’s political future is the hottest question on Beacon Hill. No matter who you ask, chances are they have a strong opinion, and not always the same one. Northwind Strategies and Change Research went so far as to poll Baker’s chances should he ditch the Republican Party and run as an independent, an option the governor has dismissed.
“I don’t think he’s running, and I’m worried that will slow down a lot of things over the next year if there’s an exodus from his cabinet,” one Democratic senator said this week.
It’s a topic so hot, in fact, that Baker doesn’t even want to touch it. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that question,” he told a reporter on Monday.
But voters want to know. Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito is probably curious. And presumably donors are interested as well, as they were asked this week to chip in again for an undefined political cause at a pre-Thanksgiving fundraiser for Baker at Davio’s in the Seaport.
Attorney General Maura Healey also has a stake in whatever Baker decides to do. But possibly before deciding whether she wants the governor’s job, the top prosecutor will have to make a call on whether to appeal the decision of Hampden Superior Court Judge Edward McDonough, Jr. to dismiss criminal neglect charges she brought against former Holyoke Soldiers’ Home superintendent Bennett Walsh and ex-medical director Dr. David Clinton.
McDonough determined that there was “insufficient reasonably trustworthy evidence” to prove that the decision by Walsh and Clinton to merge two dementia units at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak changed the health outcomes for patients who later became infected.
The case was, and still is, one being watched nationally after states around the country experienced COVID-19 outbreaks in congregate care settings like nursing homes. Healey has 30 days to decide her next move.
Hospitals are also encroaching on uncomfortable territory, with “longer than average hospital stays and significant workforce shortages, separate and apart from the challenges brought on by COVID” stressing the capacities of some facilities, Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders said.
Acting Public Health Commissioner Margret Cooke issued an order directing hospitals and hospital systems with less than 15% staffed ICU and medical-surgical bed capacity to begin to scale back non-essential procedures. The order, which takes effect next week, is in response to the loss of 500 beds already across the state due to staffing shortages, according to the administration.
Hospitals, like many government agencies, have required workers to get vaccinated. Those employees are on the frontlines, facing the risks of daily exposure, or exposing patients, to COVID-19.
That hasn’t been the case on Beacon Hill where despite legislators and staff being required to be vaccinated, few work with any regularity from the State House, which remains among the last state capitols closed to the public.
House leaders this week announced the babiest of steps toward a return to normal operations, with employees told they must be “available” to work in person beginning Dec. 13 as a condition of employment, meaning the ability to work remotely is no longer an excuse for not being vaccinated.
This phase of reopening, dubbed 2A, is a precursor, according to House leaders, to calling back a larger cohort of lawmakers and staff on a more regular basis, rather than just the minimum required to facilitate sessions, which this week brought about the passage of a genocide education bill.