Governor

When the head of JPMorgan Chase met with shareholders to answer for a trading loss of more than $2 billion Tuesday, it was against an evolving political backdrop: Donors from big banks are betting on Mitt Romney to defeat President Obama and repeal new restraints on risky, large-scale investments. "There's no doubt that there's been a big diminution of support for the president," said William M. Daley, Obama's former chief of staff and a former top JPMorgan Chase executive. "People in the financial services sector are saying, ‘The president has been too tough on us, both in policy and on...

Plenty of Kansas legislators' fingerprints are on the aggressive income tax cuts signed into law this week by conservative Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, including those of some GOP moderates now describing it as a budget crisis in the making. But Brownback now owns the legislation, even though it strayed significantly from the tax plan he outlined in January and he and his allies sought less aggressive alternatives in the legislative session's final days. He not only signed the bill, but he pushed for the debate making it possible and ultimately embraced what passed.

Last Monday, leaders from Partners HealthCare System Inc. gathered in the dark-paneled office of Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo to lay out their objections to his expansive 278-page plan to tame health care costs. The House proposal, unveiled 10 days earlier, called in part for closer oversight of the prices and operations of hospitals and their physicians groups, especially more costly ones like those owned by Partners, and influential board chairman Jack Connors requested a meeting.

New Jersey will defy a federal ban and let people bet on the outcomes of football, basketball and other games this fall, Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday. Speaking at a news conference highlighting efforts to reinvigorate Atlantic City, Christie said the regulations his administration will issue next week make no attempt to overturn a 1992 federal law that limits sports betting to four states. "We intend to go forward," the Republican governor said. "If someone wants to stop us, then let them try to stop us. We want to work with the casinos and horse racing industry to get it...

In the final months of two mostly unmemorable terms in office, Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri boasted about his little state's big splash - stealing former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling and his nascent video game company from Massachusetts. "This is a risk worth taking," said Carcieri, a Republican, announcing the 2010 deal that lured Schilling's company, 38 Studios, to Providence, and put Rhode Island taxpayers on the hook for up to $75 million in guaranteed loans to an athlete who liked video games but had never developed one. "I think the governor...

Mitt Romney has long called himself a venture capitalist, experience he says helps him understand the economy better than other candidates for president. But he spent much more of his career in leveraged buyouts than in the investments in start-up companies known as venture capital. Romney's one true venture deal was Staples Inc., the office supply superstore, two years after he started Bain Capital. He wasn't the first to discover Staples; another Boston venture firm introduced him to Staples founder Tom Stemberg.

There's a sweet and telling moment, near the beginning of NECN's new documentary about Deval Patrick, when the governor sits behind his desk and signs his first bill into law. It's about as dull a piece of legislation as they come -- establishing a panel to oversee the Department of Public Health -- but Patrick loops his signature with boyish pride. "This is how a bill is made, boys and girls!" he announces. "Thank you. That's it! It's a law!" It's a nice example of what access can provide, and "The Education of Deval Patrick," which premieres tonight at 8, provides a few such...

GREENWICH, Conn. — Teachers said he was mentally retarded. Some of his nastier classmates called him a dummy. Today, Dannel P. Malloy is called something else: governor of Connecticut. Malloy, who still struggles with reading and calls writing “almost impossible,’’ credits his lifelong struggle with dyslexia for his success in developing listening skills and memory tricks he uses every day with constituents and legislators. Despite reaching his state’s top elected position, he still has lingering embarrassment over his learning difficulties, Malloy told...

DAMARISCOTTA, Maine -- Ella Payne of Waldoboro, widow of former governor and US senator Frederick Payne, died yesterday at a nursing home. She was 97. Mrs. Payne was active in community affairs during the years her husband was in public office, as governor from 1949 to 1953 and senator from 1953 to 1959. She remained active late in life, said her nephew, John Miller of Eastport. Mrs. Payne was also an avid baseball fan and hosted a number of major league teams with her husband at the couple's summer home in Medomak.

A late-night encounter with four bears trying to snack from backyard birdfeeders gave Vermont's governor a lesson in what not to do in bear country. One of the bears chased Peter Shumlin and nearly caught the governor while he was trying to shoo the animals away, he said Friday. Shumlin said he had just gone to bed inside his rented home late Wednesday when the bears woke him up. He looked out the window and saw them in a tree about 5 feet from the house trying to get food from his four birdfeeders.

Rhode Island's gamble on former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's video game company may be in jeopardy, but it could pay political dividends to Gov. Lincoln Chafee, who has vowed to protect a state investment in the company that he once opposed. Before he took office, Chafee was a vocal critic of the state's decision to guarantee $75 million in loans to 38 Studios. But now that the company's future is in question, Chafee has promised to try to save the company even as he rules out additional taxpayer support.

Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee said Tuesday that former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's troubled video game company has been "stonewalling" state officials trying to find out what happened to the company. "There's been a lot of stonewalling going on," Chafee said on former Providence mayor Buddy Cianci's radio talk show on WPRO-AM. "It's been difficult to deal with them. " Rhode Island lured 38 Studios from Massachusetts with a $75 million loan guarantee in 2010. But 38 Studios has asked the state to approve millions more in state tax...

A substantial portion of the funding for Governor Deval Patrick's two second-term international trade missions has come from a handful of powerful executives and companies with significant financial interests before the state. Through a nonprofit established by his administration last year called Moving Massachusetts Forward, the Patrick administration collected $130,000 from five donors, according to ethics disclosure forms filed by the governor. Unlike campaign donations, contributions to the group have no limits and are tax-free.

The former governor of a Mexican state bordering Texas accepted millions of dollars in bribes from drug cartels and invested the money in Texas real estate, federal prosecutors alleged in two forfeiture cases filed Tuesday. No criminal charges have been filed against Tomas Yarrington, who served as governor of Tamaulipas state from 1999 to 2004. But the civil actions allege that Yarrington "acquired millions of dollars in payments" while in public office from drug cartels "and from various extortion or bribery schemes.

AUGUSTA, Maine - Even though Governor Paul LePage signed a bill Wednesday to make up for an $80 million budget shortfall largely through Medicaid cuts, the debate is far from over. Maine voters can expect the cuts to become an issue in this year's legislative election. "What the debate demonstrates is the difference between the parties," state Senator Philip Bartlett II, Democrat of Gorham, said hours after the Republican governor signed the bill. During the Senate debate the previous night, he labeled the budget "a political manifesto" for the GOP. ...

Lost in the hoopla over the effort to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker after he took on union rights is an ongoing secret investigation that has already ensnared a handful of the Republican governor's former aides. The investigation by Milwaukee County's district attorney hasn't resonated with voters, but with the June 5 recall less than three weeks away Democrats have started playing up questions about why Walker created a criminal defense fund for himself and whether the governor might face charges next.

NEW ORLEANS — The dust-up over Virginia’s proclamation for Confederate History Month seems like a lot of noise over something that “doesn’t amount to diddly,’’ Haley Barbour, Mississippi’s governor, said in an interview aired yesterday. Bob McDonnell, Virginia’s Republican governor, apologized for leaving out of his proclamation any reference to slavery. He added language to the decree calling slavery evil and inhumane after being criticized for reviving what many Virginians believe is an insensitive commemoration.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Clifford Hansen, a rancher who rode his agricultural background to political success in Cheyenne and Washington, D.C., died Tuesday night. He was 97. Mr. Hansen, who suffered from ailments including respiratory problems and had returned home Monday after hospital treatment for a broken pelvis, died at his home in Jackson, said his son, Peter. Mr. Hansen was the nation’s oldest living former senator, as well as a former governor of Wyoming. “I am sure there are many things that could be said,’’ Peter Hansen said.

Governor Deval Patrick joined UMass officials Wednesday to break ground on a new center that they say will be the first-in-the-nation to allow startups the ability to test their biomanufacturing methods and products during development, as well as access a wide-range of support. Patrick, University of Massachusetts president Robert Caret, and UMass Dartmouth chancellor Jean MacCormack spoke at the morning groundbreaking ceremony for the Massachusetts Accelerator for Biomanufacturing.

PROVIDENCE - Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling scrambled to prop up his ailing video game company, asking Rhode Island officials Wednesday for more public aid while Governor Lincoln Chafee questioned whether the state should cut its losses in the firm, 38 Studios LLC. "How do we avoid throwing good money after bad?" Chafee asked after an emergency meeting of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp., which provided $75 million in loan guarantees two years ago to woo 38 Studios from Massachusetts to Providence.