Charles D. Baker '79: GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Has High Hopes for Change

Charles D. Baker ’79 learned to love politics at a young age.

“My interest in politics came mostly from my parents,” says Baker, who is running on the Republican ticket for governor of Massachusetts.

He recalls heated discussions across the kitchen table between his father, a conservative Republican, and his mother, a lifelong Democrat—discussions in which Baker and his two brothers were expected to take part.

Baker says that he learned many lessons about politics from those dinnertime debates.

“The biggest one is that you can disagree without being disagreeable,” he says. “[My parents have] been married for 55 years, and this is going to be the first time they vote for the same person.”

FROM HARVARD COLLEGE TO HARVARD PILGRIM

Though he was born in New York, Baker spent most of his childhood in Massachusetts, aside from a stretch in Washington, D.C., while his father served in the administration of then-U.S. President Richard M. Nixon.

The family returned to Massachusetts in time for Baker to enter high school there. He traveled less than 15 miles from Needham High to Thayer Hall when he began his freshman year at Harvard in 1975.

At Harvard, Baker played for the junior varsity basketball team as a freshman and served as its assistant coach as a senior. He was part of the Delta Upsilon club—a final club which is no longer extant—and according to basketball teammate Andrew P. Buchsbaum ’79, he frequently spent time in friends’ dorm rooms listening to “head-banging rock.” Though Baker concentrated in English, he recalls being drawn toward many courses in government and social studies.

Classmates remember Baker as amiable, enthusiastic, and passionate about sports but say they did not foresee his political future.

“You would want him to be on your team because he was a go-to guy that would not give up on a play,” recalls R. Stewart Shofner ’79, who played basketball with Baker and shared a suite in Lowell House with him during their sophomore year.

“I remember Charlie as a clean-cut Massachusetts native,” says Shofner, who hails from Tennessee, “which is rare, because most of the natives that I met were either a little scraggly or way out there.”

“I wouldn’t have imagined that he’d be the classmate I’d have who’s running for governor,” Buchsbaum says. “He didn’t have that hard edge you see in some people who are really motivated to run for office.”

“I could see him going into the ministry as easy as what he’s gone into,” says Shofner. “That’s the picture I have of Charlie Baker. He’s a kind of easygoing nice guy who’s an honest fellow—a gentleman of the caliber that it’s nice to see that Harvard can produce.”

Baker—who told the Boston Globe that he chose to go to Harvard, following in his father’s footsteps, “because of the brand”—does not ascribe any credit to his education in his decision to go into politics, nor does he look back fondly on his college years.

The Globe reported that when writing to his classmates on the occasion of their fifth reunion, Baker asked, “Do I miss Harvard?” and then answered, “Not for a second. With a few exceptions...those four years are ones I would rather forget.”

Now more than 30 years since graduation, he echoes the same sentiments: “Harvard? It’s a big place,” he says. “I definitely thought about the question of where I fit the whole time I was there.”

A few years after his school years in Cambridge, Baker headed to Chicago, where he earned an MBA at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Since then, he has held a long line of positions in business and government, including Secretary of Health and Human Services and Secretary of Administration and Finance under two different Republican Mass. governors. In the latter position, he was one of the main planners of the Big Dig, a massive, controversial construction project in Boston.

Baker next ventured from government into healthcare. In 1999, he became CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, a position he held for ten years before stepping down to run for governor. Harvard Pilgrim, New England’s largest not-for-profit health plan, formed from the 1994 merger of Harvard Community Health Plan—founded at Harvard Medical School—and insurer Pilgrim Health. Harvard Pilgrim still maintains ties to HMS to this day, according to Baker.

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE STATE

Baker’s background in business and health policy echoes his current calls from the campaign trail. The most important issues in this election, he says, are “jobs and the economic future of Massachusetts.”

Decrying the plight of more than 300,000 Massachusetts residents who are currently out of work, Baker criticizes his Democratic opponent, incumbent Governor Deval L. Patrick ’78, for not taking strong enough measures to boost the state’s economy: “I don’t think he’s been anywhere near aggressive enough in taking those issues on and dealing with them,” Baker says.

“He raised taxes eight times,” he adds. “All of that, I think, negatively affects the state’s ability to compete...Things are headed in the wrong direction, and I don’t think [Patrick] appreciates how much needs to be done to fix our competitive position.”

As the Harvard Republican Club’s vice president of campaigns and activism, Rachel L. Wagley ’11 has been leading student volunteers to Baker’s Boston headquarters to make telephone calls to voters. Wagley praises the “Baker’s Dozen,” 13 proposals which Baker promises would save the state over $1 billion.

“Massachusetts has a huge deficit and out-of-control state spending,” Wagley says, adding that Baker is “really the only candidate” who can address these issues since Patrick and Independent contender Timothy P. Cahill, who currently serves as the state treasurer, have failed to remedy these problems during their current terms.

Baker himself says Patrick hasn’t been running the capital as he should.

“[Patrick] hasn’t really done much to reform Beacon Hill,” Baker says. “It’s pretty much the same government it was when he got there four years ago.”

OUTREACH TO UNDERGRADUATES

Baker and his supporters emphasize several issues which they say should be of particular importance to students voting in this election.

“If you’re a junior or a senior, you should be focused on jobs,” Baker says.

Matthew J. Stern, a senior at Boston University who chairs the student arm of Baker’s campaign, echoes the sentiment, pointing out that the current Massachusetts economy may seem inhospitable to recent graduates.

“People are graduating and students are leaving Massachusetts,” he says. “We have the top universities...and we want to make sure that we’re keeping people here.”

Stern brings up state funding for higher education as another issue that he says should matter to student voters: “Governor Patrick has decreased higher education funding more than any other governor in the U.S.”

Stern touts Baker’s plans to increase the number of public charter schools and to uphold the state’s current standardized testing system rather than conform to new federal education guidelines.

Wagley suggests that social issues should be a selling point in convincing undergraduates to cast their ballots for Baker. In the current election, both Patrick and Baker support gay marriage and pro-choice abortion policies, according to Baker. Since he is “by no means a social conservative,” Wagley says that she thinks Harvard students should “actually like Baker for those reasons.”

Stern says that the students from Boston-area universities who fill Baker’s phone bank—more than 30 volunteers on a given Monday or Thursday night—are drawn by Baker’s stance as “a social liberal and a fiscal conservative,” not by the desire to put the volunteer activism on their resumes.

“They’re not looking for a recommendation: they’re looking for change,” Stern says. “They’re looking to make sure we’ll have an economic future that will lead to success in the state.”

—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.harvard.edu.