Ron Beaty won’t run for lieutenant governor after all.
The former Barnstable County Commissioner, who served from 2017 to 2021, is now running for Massachusetts state treasurer instead. He is the first Republican in the state to announce intentions to run for the post in 2022.
Beaty told NewBostonPost on Wednesday night that he made the switch to running for state treasurer after doing some research and seeing some problems he’d like to solve.
“Based upon the information gathered, I found that my personal talents, previous political experience, and formal education would presently be more useful and valuable to the Commonwealth’s taxpayers and voters by running for State Treasurer instead of Lieutenant Governor,” Beaty said by email. “Massachusetts is among the top four states in the country with the most monetary debt. This has been going on for many years and is a ticking financial and budgetary time bomb. “
Beaty cited two sources laying out what he sees as a poor financial situation for the state.
One is the financial watchdog Truth in Accounting. It noted last year that Massachusetts had more than $80.9 billion in debt on the horizon mostly due to unfunded pension benefits in the coming years.
The other is Forbes Magazine which said last year the state had $34,214,302,000 in assets and $104,534,280,000 in liabilities.
“The residents, taxpayers, and voters of Massachusetts deserve much, much better. As a 2022 Republican Candidate for Massachusetts State Treasurer,” Beaty said in the email message, “I hope to fill this dire void in fiscal state leadership through implementation of sound fiscal policies and budgetary practices much in the same manner as I did as a pragmatically conservative Barnstable County Commissioner on Cape Cod from 2017 to 2021.”
With Beaty’s decision, Rayla Campbell is the only declared Republican running for lieutenant governor. She ran a write-in campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives seat in the state’s Seventh Congressional District last year against U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Dorchester). Campbell got more than 1,200 certified votes in the primary and more than 600 certified votes in the general election.
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