State Auditor Suzanne Bump Endorses Chris Dempsey for State Auditor

From: Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey

BOSTON, MA -- State Auditor Suzanne Bump on May 18th, announced her enthusiastic endorsement of Chris Dempsey in the race for State Auditor. The Dempsey campaign is sending an email on behalf of Auditor Bump to delegates to the Democratic State Convention in June, in which she urges delegates to support Chris’s candidacy at that event and encourages them to actively campaign for Chris in both the September primary and in the general election in November 2022. 

“Chris is a proven watchdog for the public interest. He has already saved Massachusetts residents billions of dollars by questioning the financial assumptions behind the bid to bring the Olympics to Boston in 2024, an effort that put him at odds with powerful political and business interests,” Bump says in the letter. “Chris's executive leadership in the Patrick-Murray administration and as an advocate for more sustainable and effective transportation gives him a wealth of experience in policy-making and government operations. Chris is a true progressive, whose positions and voting record contrast sharply with those of the other Democratic candidate in the race.”

Bump and Dempsey will speak at a grassroots event in Worcester on Wednesday (5/18) evening at the home of Worcester Democratic City Committee Chair Mary Anne Dube, another Dempsey supporter. 

“I am honored to have Auditor Bump’s strong support to succeed her. Suzanne has an accomplished, impressive record of public service. Under her tenure, the Auditor’s Office has received national recognition for its professionalism and leadership on issues of government accountability. I look forward to building on her successes and ensuring that the office is an independent voice on Beacon Hill for taxpayers and everyone who relies on public services and a well-functioning state government,” said Dempsey.

“I first met Suzanne Bump when she was a top policy advisor on the historic Deval Patrick for Governor campaign in 2006, and we were colleagues in the Patrick-Murray Administration. I have always admired her thoughtfulness, her measured approach, and her dedication to improving our Commonwealth.”

The Dempsey campaign has released an endorsement video that is available at: http://www.dempseyforauditor.com/bump. The full letter from Auditor Bump to delegates is also available on that page.

Chris Dempsey’s campaign has been endorsed by Progressive Massachusetts and Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, the two leading progressive political organizations in Massachusetts. The campaign has more than 1,600 individual contributors, with more than 1,400 of those contributions from Massachusetts residents, the most in the race. Last week, the campaign submitted more than 5,000 certified signatures to the Secretary of State, a key step in qualifying for the ballot.

Chris Dempsey is a candidate for Massachusetts State Auditor. Chris, who in mid-2021 stepped down as Director of the Transportation for Massachusetts advocacy coalition, will be able to tap into an extensive well of experience and knowledge developed from his years of work in the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

Chris has gotten results inside of state government. As a member of the Democratic Party’s statewide coordinated campaign, Chris helped elect Deval Patrick and Tim Murray as Governor and Lieutenant Governor in 2006. Within the Patrick/Murray Administration, Chris served as Assistant Secretary of Transportation. In that role, he co-founded the MBTA’s open-data program, which was dubbed a “smart, 21st-century alternative” by the Boston Globe editorial board and was named Innovation of the Year by WTS-Massachusetts in 2010. The MBTA became the first transit agency on the East Coast to share its real-time bus and subway data with third-party developers, who created the initial smartphone apps that hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts transit riders use on May 18th.

After earning his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School Chris worked as a consultant at Bain & Co. While at Bain, he co-founded No Boston Olympics in a living room in 2013. That grassroots effort took on powerful Olympic boosters, raising tough questions about a proposal that would have cost taxpayers billions of dollars. No Boston Olympics was outspent $1,500 to $1, with proponents spending $15 million to less than $10,000 spent by the all-volunteer No Boston Olympics. As State Auditor, Chris will apply the same dedication to facts and the public interest that drove No Boston Olympics.

Chris has also taken his determination to improve and modernize state government into the business world. He was Vice President at Masabi, a transportation technology startup that provides mobile ticketing for the MBTA and transit systems in New York and Los Angeles. Masabi’s roots are in the MBTA’s open data program launched by Chris -- a reminder that private-sector job growth can result from public-sector innovation.

Raised in Brookline by public school educators, Chris is a graduate of Brookline High School, Pomona College (B.A., 2005) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A, 2012). 

Chris lives with his fiancée, Anna, in his hometown of Brookline, where he is an elected Town Meeting Member and previously served as Chair of the Brookline Transportation Board.