Suzanne Bump, Massachusetts state auditor. Photo by for State House News Service.
Massachusetts will elect a new state auditor in 2022.
That’s because incumbent Democrat Suzanne Bump says she won’t run for a fourth term.
“I knew when I came here I was not going to equal the tenure of my predecessor,” Bump told Politico this week. “I’m still as dedicated to the office’s mission of transparency and accountability as I was in 2011, but I also believe that there are other people who have ideas for how to take the work that we have done and bring it even further forward.”
“It’s hard to say that 12 years will be enough. But I just want to give somebody else another chance to advance this mission,” she added.
Bump is an experienced politician. First elected to the post in 2010, she served as the state’s Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development under then-governor Deval Patrick from 2007 to 2009. Before that, she was a state representative in the 5th Norfolk District from 1985 to 1993.
Bump’s not running for re-election may result in a more competitive race for the seat in both the Democratic primary and in the general election. When the seat was open in 2010, Bump ran a tight race against Republican Mary Connaughton, a former board member of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. Bump got 48.5 percent of the vote while Connaughton got 46.3 percent and Green-Rainbow Party candidate Nathanael Alexander Fortune got 5.1 percent, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Office.
Bump expanded her vote totals as an incumbent in 2014 and 2018, receiving 57.7 percent and 62.1 percent of the vote, respectively. In each of those three auditor elections there was a Green-Rainbow candidate, meaning there were two left-of-center parties on the ballot.
The state’s web site says that the auditor “conducts audits, investigations, and studies to promote accountability and transparency, improve performance, and make government work better.”
As of Tuesday morning, no candidates have announced that they will run for state auditor in 2022.
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Suzanne Bump, Massachusetts state auditor. Photo by for State House News Service. 
