Driscoll Makes The Rounds

Kim Driscoll, Mayor of Salem, is using a convenient excuse -- a reception in Easthampton for the women-in-politics organization Emerge Massachusetts -- to do a little statewide meeting-and-greeting today as she continues to lay the groundwork for a possible US Senate campaign.

"The Emerge event is a natural thing I'd be doing," Driscoll said. "Being able to combine it" with building her statewide contacts "just makes sense."

Driscoll was speaking to me from the statehosue in Worcester, one of her stopovers on route to Easthampton.

Driscoll says she is still at least several weeks away from making a decision about the Senate race, but the timing of today's activities may have gotten a boost from a National Journal article posted today by Jim O'Sullivan (late of State House News Service).

O'Sullivan interviewed Governor Deval Patrick in Washington, and got a surprisingly substantive revelation about that upcoming Senate race. Patrick declared that City Year co- founder (and 2009 candidate) Alan Khazei, activist Bob Massie, and Newton Mayor Setti Warren, are both "in, for sure."

That's a newsmaker -- Warren in particular, while much-rumored as a candidate (particularly in this space), has not come close to publicly confirming plans to run.

With Patrick's statement may suggest that Warren will be announcing sooner rather than later -- and even if he wasn't planning to, this may make him speed up his timetable.

That in turn puts added pressure on Driscoll to make the rounds -- to make her own pitch before people start lining up with Warren or any other candidate.

Asked about Warren, Driscoll says his decision about running would have no impact on her own. "If you're interested in getting into something like this, you base that on your own reasons," she says.

Maybe so. But it may speed up your state-wide travel schedule.