Charlie Baker Maintains He Still Isn’t Voting for Trump or Clinton

Photo via Governor’s Office

Despite an early disavowal of his party’s presidential nominee, Gov. Charlie Baker maintained that he still isn’t voting for Donald Trump, nor his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

On vacation in Ireland when the Washington Post published comments Trump made about women, bragging that he could “grab them by the pussy” and make other unwanted advances, Baker said he’s still “incredibly disappointed” by the choice facing voters on November 8.

“There’s a reason why I said I wasn’t going to vote for either of them. And let me start by saying I said wasn’t going to support Donald Trump a very long time ago, seven months,” Baker said. “I think I was one of the first elected Republican officials in the country to say that I could not see myself voting for him because I didn’t believe he had the temperament to do the job. I still don’t.”

But the Swampscott Republican’s distaste for Trump doesn’t mean he plans to join other prominent Republicans like former President George H.W. Bush in endorsing Clinton.

“Secretary Clinton, in my view, has believability problems,” he said.

Baker has come under fire from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has endorsed Clinton, for not being a more outspoken critic of Trump as a leader within the Republican Party. A recent poll indicated Baker was the third-most popular governor in America.

“As one of the first elected Republicans in the United States to come out against him and say I would not vote for him, I think that’s pretty far out there,” Baker said.

Instead of involving himself fully in the 2016 presidential race, Baker has lent his political capital to the campaign against legalizing recreational marijuana, as well as the ballot question seeking to lift the cap on charter school expansion. He has also grappled with ongoing scandal at the Department of Conservation and Recreation.