Massachusetts State Auditor Election Quietly the Race of the Season

It is the least talked-about statewide office of the six that are on the ballot this year, but the race to be the next Massachusetts State Auditor has quietly shaped up to be the most competitive election from the primary through November. 

The state auditor is the watch dog of the Massachusetts government. The office conducts audits, investigations, and studies to promote transparency accountability and efficiency in state government. 

Since 2011, Suzanne Bump has been quietly but effectively carrying out the duties of auditor, having identified over $1.3 billion in improper government expenditures since taking office in 2011. However, she has decided not to seek reelection, leaving an open seat that has drawn strong and qualified challengers on both sides of the aisle. 

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In the Democratic primary, former Patrick Administration executive Chris Dempsey emerged from the MassDems convention with the endorsement of the party, securing 53 percent of delegate support to Senator Diana DiZoglio’s 47 percent.

DiZoglio is the current senator for the Massachusetts First Essex District. She was elected to that seat in 2019 after serving as a state representative since 2013. DiZoglio's candidacy is grounded by humble beginnings of growing up housing insecure as the child of a single teen mother, and herself having to work multiple jobs as a waitress and a house cleaner to put herself through college and make ends meet when she began her career.  

Prior to being elected, DiZoglio worked as a live-in mentor for a young teen girls home and several other nonprofit organizations that helped at risk youth in inner-cities, then worked as a legislative staffer in the State House. She has secured major union endorsements such as the Mass Nurses Association, the Mass Teachers Association, and AFL-CIO, as well as the support of some of her legislative colleagues and Congresswoman Lori Trahan. 

Dempsey served as Assistant Secretary of Transportation under Governor Deval Patrick before moving to the private sector to be the Executive Director of Transportation for All, a coalition of organizations that advocate for much-needed reforms in Massachusetts transit infrastructure.

Most famously, Dempsey spearheaded the No Boston Olympics campaign, which despite being outspent 1,500-1 successfully prevented the 2024 Olympic Games –and the financial wrought they leave behind – from coming to Boston, earning him “Bostonian of the Year” by Boston Globe Magazine.

Along with securing the endorsement of the MassDems, Dempsey has also earned the endorsements of Progressive Mass, the ELM Action fund, many legislators on Beacon Hill and most notably the person in the office currently, State Auditor Suzanne Bump herself. 

Though the other primaries for statewide office are competitive, the Democrat who emerges victorious in those races on September 6 looks to have clear path to victory. The Democrat in the auditor race, however, is presented with a seemingly more serious challenge than the others with Republican candidate Anthony Amore on the other side of the ticket. 

Amore is the current Director of Security for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Before that, Amore amassed decades-long history of auditing and investigative work. For 15 years, Amore worked as a federal agent for both FAA Security and the Department of Homeland Security. After 9/11, Amore was tapped for the position of Assistant Federal Security Director and tasked with leading the effort to rebuild the security infrastructure at Logan Airport.

Unlike most of his Republican counterparts in on the statewide ballot, Amore doesn’t project the hard-right Trumpian kind of politics at which most of the crucial unenrolled voting bloc in Massachusetts recoils. Amore presents himself as a moderate Baker-esque Republican; in fact, the still universally popular Governor Charlie Baker gave Amore his first and to date only endorsement of the election season. 

In a rare election season that there are open seats for both governor and attorney general, very few expected the race for auditor to be this hotly contested. Yet a slate of formidable candidates on both sides of the ticket has given Commonwealth voters a reason to pay close attention all the way down their statewide ballot.