GOP Massachusetts governor says he left presidential ballot blank

Republican Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, who previously suggested he would not support President Trump for reelection, said Tuesday that he left the top of the ticket blank when voting.

“I blanked it,” Baker told reporters in reference to the ballot he cast on Election Day, according to MassLive. Baker previously said he left his presidential ballot blank in 2016.

Baker and another GOP governor of a heavily Democratic state, Maryland’s Larry Hogan, have been among the Republican leaders most critical of the president.

Baker has frequently criticized the president for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and for his response to racial unrest in 2020.

Trump attacked Baker after the governor called it “appalling and outrageous” that the president would not commit to a peaceful transfer of power in response to a loss.

“It is appalling and outrageous that anyone would suggest for a minute that if they lose an election they’re not going to leave — period,” Baker said in September. “I know that I speak, I am sure, for the vast majority of elected officials in the United States of America when I say that.”

Shortly afterward, Trump attacked Baker’s defense of mail-in ballots, which the president has frequently attacked without substantial evidence as a source of of widespread voter fraud.

“RINO [Republican in name only] Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts is unsuccessfully trying to defend Mail In Ballots, when there is fraud being found all over the place,” Trump tweeted. “Just look at some of the recent races, or the Trump Ballots in Pennsylvania that were thrown into the garbage. Wrong Charlie!”

The Massachusetts governor has been named as one of a handful of Republicans that could be in the mix for Cabinet positions in a Joe Biden administration. Baker, who was reelected by a wide margin in 2018, said in October that he intended to complete his second term.

“You’re going to be stuck with me for at least the next two years, anyway,” Baker said in Revere last month. “It’s flattering to be considered, but I like the job I have.”