Since Calvin Coolidge was governor of the Commonwealth in 1920, Republicans have owned the “Corner Office” in Boston for 13 terms out of 23.  Charlie Baker, age 57, won his bid to be the 14^th  by some 7,000 votes.  Baker will succeed retiring Gov. Deval Patrick, the lone two-term Democrat in more than two decades since Mike Dukakis, “M1 Abrams Mike,” interrupted his daily MBTA trek to perch beside a 120-mm smoothbore during his pathetic presidential run in 1988.

Baker, no Tea Party firebrand, will be the most liberal social-issues Republican governor in the country.  But he’s a fiscal technocratic tightwad, a cost- and tax-cutter, leaning more heavily on his Northwestern MBA than his BA from Harvard.  Baker served as finance chief and HHS secretary under two Republican governors.  His most auspicious job was head of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care for a decade, where he rescued the health benefits non-profit from near bankruptcy, turning it into the most admired health benefits organization nationwide for five years running.

Gov. Deval Patrick’s recent spectacular bonfire – torching nearly $1 billion in failing to implement a new Obamacare state exchange – and his derelict handling of the tragic dysfunction in the child welfare agency, shamed Massachusetts voters into forsaking their indelible Democrat party tattoo, if only for a season, proving that respect for good management, fiscal thrift, and common sense is still possible.  Yet 48% blindly voted for more of the same.

No doubt many Commonwealth voters held their noses in voting for Charlie Baker.  Martha Coakley was simply a bad candidate, and now a two-time loser for the Commonwealth’s two top jobs.  Indecisive when asked her position on drivers’ licenses for illegals, ignorant about the details of an unpopular gas tax, coy about raising taxes, denying her own campaign finance irregularities – violating statutes she had pledged to uphold – and owning a lackluster career as the lead Commonwealth prosecutor, Coakley is as inspiring as a cranberry bog, with as much personality as the once ubiquitous codfish.

Even the Boston Globe endorsed Charlie Baker.  But this was as much about the pedestrian candidacy of Martha Coakley as any virtues possessed by Baker.  And the new owner of the Globe is none other than lib Democrat John Henry, also owner of the Boston Red Sox.  Despite his southpaw political stripe, Henry couldn’t forgive Coakley for her clueless radio interview in 2010, while running for the U.S. Senate, saying that Red Sox World Series pitching icon Curt Schilling was a NY Yankees fan.  Seeking a political death wish, she later sniped that shaking hands and greeting Red Sox fans outside Fenway Park was a waste of time.

For Charlie Baker, it was better to be lucky than good.  Lucky to have such an inept opponent – as William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection said, "May a thousand Martha Coakleys bloom in the Democratic party."