Is this the most casual self-outing by a gay Republican in the history of politics or what?

It will be interesting to see how the GOP base in the state reacts. If Charlie Baker does pick Tisei as his LG, it's possible that someone could run against him on an anti-gay platform -- and potentially beat Tisei in the GOP primary. That would be a disaster for Baker, and the state party generally.

Hey, here's some news to crack a few smiles in the governor's office: the Massachusetts unemployment rate dropped from 9.3% to 8.7% in October -- the first monthly decline in 28 months.

Total net job losses for the month were under 1000. Construction jobs eked positive for the first time since February -- perhaps a sign of federal stimulus money at work.

In this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print tomorrow, online now -- I write about some of the ways the Democratic candidates for US Senate are trying to get attention and position.

I start with a look at how Congressman Michael Capuano is trying to use prominent female endorsers to signal to women that they needn't feel obligated to vote for Attorney General Martha Coakley.

The state legislature calls it quits for the year today, and here are the recent developments, according to reports from the State House News Service:

--Speaker Bob DeLeo is indicating that he will not try to rush through the education bill that the Senate passed Tuesday, which is a major priority of the Patrick administration.

In the previous post, I told you about my exchange with an academic at UCLA who studied candidate attractiveness. Well, it turns out that when you mention Massachusetts to people who study candidate attractiveness, their minds turn to one thing: the beautiful man with the perfect hair, Mitt Romney himself.

Although the study did not include gubernatorial candidates, Romney was entered into the database by virtue of his 1994 campaign for Senate.

I recently came upon an academic paper in which three UCLA poli-sci researchers concluded that more competitive election contests produce better-looking candidates than less competitive ones. For example, if the 'out' party has a good chance of beating the incumbent and taking the seat, somehow they come up with a good-looking candidate; if they have little chance of winning, they come up with someone more homely.

I'm two weeks late in producing my every-two-months rankings of the likely 2012 Republican nominees for President. (I would offer as my excuse all the local political races I've had to cover, but most of you already know it's the cyber-slacking!)

Anyway, no new #1, as Tim Pawlenty keeps doing all the right things -- including, next month, the first major New Hampshire visit by a serious '12 contender.

The Michael Capuano campaign confirms for me that US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will formally endorse Michael Capuano for US Senate, while she is in town Friday for a talk at Harvard.

Capuano is considered a top Pelosi lieutenant -- he headed her transition team when the Democrats took the majority in 2006 and made her Speaker.

So Lou Dobbs has departed CNN, where his increasingly insane rantings have positioned him for bigger and better things in the "movement conservative marketplace" I'm always talking about. I had predicted early on that he would run a third-party campaign for President in 2008, and he ended up considering it but not taking the plunge.

In my article in this week's Boston Phoenix, I make note that during the 2008 Presidential election cycle, I heard repeatedly -- from Democrats, Republicans and Independents -- about how frustrated and fed-up they were with the US Congress. In their view, Washington had become impotent to address the country's big, serious problems, because the Congress was completely frozen up by (take your pick) hyperpartisanship, corruption, special-interest groups, corporate lobbyists, inertia, and/or weak-kneed pandering pols.

In this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print tomorrow, online now -- my estimable colleague Steven Stark and I go toe-to-toe on the future prospects for our President's popularity. Stark argues that Obama has peaked, and it's all downhill from here. I counter that his glory days lie ahead.

Read both, and render your own verdict:

With the recent announcement that Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell, a Republican, will not run for re-election, there is a realistic, if slim, possibility that Democrats could hold all six New England governorships come January 2011. According to my extensive research -- OK, scrolling through Wikipedia, mostly -- I believe this would be the first time that has happened ever, in the 200+ years of the party (including when it was called the Democratic-Republican Party).

From a strictly dispassionate political calculus, Martha Coakley's declaration that she would have voted against the House health-care bill looks like a dumb move. A frontrunner never wants to open up new differences with her opponents, which this obviously did -- since Michael Capuano actually did vote yes. And this is not just any old issue, this is the Big Vote, the Ted Kennedy Legacy, and all that.

In the week or so since I posted at length about the meager outlook for women Republicans in elected office, I have some updates that seem to show the problem only worsening.

First of all, as you probably know, DeDe Scozzafava was chased out of the race and, one assumes, out of the party altogether. Meanwhile, the GOP added two male governors, meaning that they now have 3 women out of 24 governors, dropping the percentage to 12.

In this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print tomorrow, online now -- I take a look at Governor Deval Patrick, who has found himself, for once, left out of the spotlight and off the front pages. In theory, the distraction of the local elections and US Senate race is providing a perfect respite for Patrick and his team to regroup, re-staff,strategize, prepare, and be ready to emerge with some political victories heading into his re-election year.