I'm a pro-choice candidate and I support marriage equality - my brother is actually gay and married. But I'm a pretty hard-headed guy when it comes to the budget and whether you're getting a bang for your buck.

We need to root out the waste and abuse that is rampant in our state agencies. When we do that and grow the economy, we will be able to fund the vital programs and services we need.

I oppose indexing gas tax hikes to inflation.

My mission will be to improve life across Massachusetts, including communities and geographies that are seeing a slower economic recovery. Lower and fairer taxes are an important part of creating jobs and accomplishing that goal.

I do see great opportunity to make reforms to our tax code, making it simpler, fairer and removing corporate loopholes.

I'm a big believer in what I call demand-style workforce development. It looks at what kinds of skills are in demand out there in the workplace. It takes that approach to skill-building.

I think people are kind of tired of the really amped-up rhetoric that passes for a lot of political dialogue, and they appreciate the fact that that's not the way we are participating in this process.

The thing I would say is governments have the tendency to over-promise and under-perform. So the over-promise part ends up sounding very aspirational. But it's the performance part that ultimately people feel every day and read about. And my goal is to make sure, whatever it is we aspire to, that we deliver on.

You just can't get surprised when you get surprised, because weird stuff just comes over the transom all the time, and it's not necessarily anything that you've planned for or anticipated.

I rode it a lot before I was governor. I rode the commuter rail for a lot of years, I rode the T for a lot of years, and I talk to people all the time who ride both.

I'm not a virtue signaler.

I've said many times that people are policy. And to be truly successful in any big organization you need to put people into jobs where they have relevant experience, relevant subject-matter expertise and the capacity to actually perform.

One of the advantages of getting elected governor when you're 58 instead of 38 is you have some mileage on you and part of that means some history and some relationships with people who have spent a fair amount of their career in the public and in the private sector.

This is Massachusetts, we're supposed to be one of the tech centers of the world. We have MIT within walking distance of the state house.

I'm a very big believer that the primary focus for any organization at any point in time should always be smarter, better, faster.

There's value in checks and balances. And there's value in having independence in the governor's office with respect to the legislature.

I think I've got a track record and an experience brief that I'll put up against anybody's.

If you want to be great, you should be great everywhere, not just here and there.

Competition in politics is just as important as competition in everything else.

When a mom or dad can stop worrying about where they will lay their head each night they can start climbing back on their feet and out of poverty.

There are creative ways to create pathways to sufficiency for families in need. To do so, we need to work together to implement good ideas.

How well we spend education dollars is just as important as how much we spend.

When public leaders turn public debates into words of war - 'enemies' 'go to hell' 'attack' - they are enabling the edgiest of their followers to take things into their hands, and unfortunately, some of them do.

Politics and public life are not for the faint of heart. It has been and always will be a noisy and cantankerous place.