Attorney General Martha Coakley announced she will run for Massachusetts governor in 2014 Monday with an online video that acknowledges her 2010 Senate race defeat to former Sen. Scott Brown, and shows the attorney general talking to many voters — she was criticized for running an impersonal campaign in 2010.
"A lot of people say politics is tough, and it can be," Coakley says in the video. "I know what it's like to lose a race. I know how hard that is. But, you know what? It's nothing compared to what so many people go through every day in their lives. And that's what I'll keep in mind every day if you give me the privilege of being your governor."
The ad shows Coakley talking to state residents in at MBTA stations, farmers markets, coffee shops, and pizza restaurants. She references the cops and teachers she talks to, and calls Massachusetts residents "the strongest, the toughest, the most resilient people in this nation, and I see that in the people I come across every day."
In the 2010 race, Coakley talked dismissively of " … standing outside Fenway Park? In the Cold? Shaking hands? … "
"These folks are the reason I'm running for governor," she says. "They need someone who will fight for them, who will take their side. I've done that as attorney general, and I'll do that as governor."
Coakley joins former state Homeland Security official and former Boston Globe columnist Juliette Kayyem and Treasurer Steve Grossman in the Democratic primary.
Republican Charlie Baker, who ran for governor and lost in 2011, announced his gubernatorial bid earlier this month with a kickoff that, as with Coakley's, tried to cast Baker as a different candidate from the one who lost in 2011.
Watch Coakley's announcement video:
