Philip Elliott reports for the AP:

[A] collection of Democratic lawmakers on Thursday renewed their push to keep rates low but also backed interest rates that were based on the markets. Their plan would base rates on a 91-day Treasury bill and allow the Education Department to add to that to pay for the administration of loan programs.

“The student loan interest rate offered by the government shouldn’t be needlessly high, it should be based on actual costs,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in introducing the plan.

The versions from both parties include a proposal that was central to Obama’s budget: interest rates would shift based on financial markets. …

Basing student loans on 10-year Treasury notes’ rates would, at least for now, offer a deal to some students. … That’s not to say, however, the rates would be a good deal forever. If Treasury increases its rates, students’ loan rates would rise, too.

For context, under the current system Congress sets the actual numerical interest rate on student loans – that’s why the rate is currently set by law at 3.8% and is (again) scheduled to rise to 6.8% on July 1. (Hence the growing focus on the issue at the moment.)

Reed’s bill would have Congress stop setting the rate by statute and start basing it on market movements instead, as outlined above. However – unlike similar proposals from President Obama and House Republicans – Reed’s bill would set a maximum cap on rates: 6.8% for subsidized loans and 8.25% for unsubsidized loans. It would also allow students to refinance their loans at a lower rate.

Why the cap? According to Reed, it’s necessary because someday interest rates will return to a higher level.

Reed’s staff says college graduates in the Class of 2007 would have paid almost 8% and the Class of 1981 would have paid almost 17% if the House GOP proposal had been law at the time. Using CBO economic forecasts, they project rates will be back above 8% by 2018 under the Obama/GOP proposals.

The White House and Republicans argue Reed’s proposal could raise costs for borrowers or force other taxpayers to subsidize student loans. “In order to have a cap, we would have to charge students more in order to hedge against the possibility that rates would go up to unmanageable levels in the future,” an administration official told reporters April 10.

While a capped market rate is Reed’s vision for a permanent fix on student loans, in the meantime he’s introduced a bill to freeze current rates for two more years while Congress comes up with a long-term resolution. “Some who claim it is important to avoid burdening our children and grandchildren with national debt are all too willing to bury these young people in student debt,” Reed said in a statement Thursday.

Reed isn’t the only local senator arguing for a fresh approach to student loans. Massachusetts’ Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday introduced a bill to let students borrow at the same rate that big banks get from the Federal Reserve’s discount window.

(photo: Manuel Balce Caneta/AP)

Three of the four members of Rhode Island’s all-Democratic congressional delegation will take aim Wednesday at someone who’s an unusual target for them: President Obama.

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman David Cicilline are among the eight members of Congress co-hosting a summit on Capitol Hill to criticize a proposal in Obama’s latest budget that would trim Social Security benefits by switching to a measure of inflation known as “chained CPI.”

Rhode Island’s entire delegation slammed the policy when it emerged, and Cicilline has garnered national attention for introducing a resolution that would have Congress express formal disapproval of chained CPI. U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont are also among the summit’s hosts, giving it a decidedly New England flavor.

There were 207,122 Rhode Island residents receiving Social Security benefits in December 2011, the most recent month for which figures are available – meaning nearly 20% of state residents are on Social Security. Two-thirds of Rhode Island’s beneficiaries were 65 or older, while 35,905 were disabled and 15,704 were children. The Rhode Islanders’ combined Social Security benefits totaled $236 million that month.

The congressional event at 12:30 p.m. will be streamed live online by Strengthen Social Security, a coalition of unions and progressive groups that supports increasing benefits.

• Related: RI congressional delegation slams Obama over Social Security (April 10)

Back in January U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told WPRI.com one of the most important ways for a U.S. senator to be effective is basically out of his control: seniority.

If that’s the case, Whitehouse’s senior colleague Jack Reed is about to get significantly more effective.

U.S. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana on Tuesday became the sixth Senate Democrat to announce he will retire rather than seek re-election next year. All but one of those six lawmakers – New Jersey’s Frank Lautenberg – have served in the Senate longer than Reed, who was first elected in 1996.

The departures of those five – Baucus, Carl Levin, Tom Harkin, Jack Rockefeller and Tim Johnson – will vault Reed from 14th to 9th on the list of the U.S. Senate’s most senior Democrats. Of course, that assumes Reed himself will win re-election next year – about as safe an assumption as there is in politics.

• Related: Levin retirement sets up Jack Reed for powerful chairmanship (March 7)

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed doesn’t just debate taxes. He pays them, too.

Reed and his wife, Julia Hart Reed, paid $39,326 in federal income taxes and $12,565 in state income taxes on their 2012 adjusted gross income of $249,700, Reed spokesman Chip Unruh told WPRI.com on Monday.

Reed earned a gross salary of $174,000 as a U.S. senator, while Mrs. Reed earned $110,305 working for the Secretary of the State as an Interparliamentary Services Coordinator. Federal taxes are due Monday.

The Reeds filed a joint income tax return, paying 15.8% to the federal government and 5% to the state government. They took $61,150 in itemized deductions on their federal return and reported $3,000 in capital losses. The pair’s federal tax rate was calculated using the alternative minimum tax, or AMT.

The Reeds’ tax bill was cut $27,503 by the home mortgage interest deduction and $5,660 by charitable contributions. Uhruh said they deducted an additional $4,947 for miscellaneous items including non-reimbursed Washington living expenses for members of Congress; professional dues and expenses including the Rhode Island and D.C. bar associations and the Council on Foreign Relations; tax preparation fees; and investment advisory fees.

Progressive favorite U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is coming to Rhode Island later this month to raise money for the re-election campaign of her fellow Democrat Jack Reed.

Warren will be the special guest at a fundraiser on April 29 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in the Rotunda Room at the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence, according to an invitation sent Monday. Suggested contributions range from $100 for individuals to $1,000 for hosts.

The fundraiser sports an all-female host committee co-chaired by Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed. Maryellen Butke, Helena Foulkes, Sandra Whitehouse and Myrth York are among the hosts.

Warren and Reed have a bit of a mutual admiration society. Reed successfully pushed to get Warren, a vocal Wall Street critic, appointed to serve with him on the Senate Banking Committee, while Warren has praised his work on financial issues. Reed is up for re-election next year.

Warren defeated Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown just last November, but she’s already Massachusetts’ senior senator now that John Kerry has resigned to serve as President Obama’s secretary of state. Democratic Congressman Ed Markey is the frontrunner in the campaign to succeed Kerry.

(photo: Warren’s office)

President Obama isn’t getting any support from Rhode Island’s congressional delegation for his controversial proposal to trim future Social Security benefits.

All four Democrats – usually loyal defenders of the president – issued statements Wednesday criticizing Obama for his proposal to use a different measure of inflation, known as “chained CPI,” to calculate Social Security benefit increases, which would reduce payments over time compared with current law.

The harshest critique came from U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a leading liberal in the chamber. “The so-called ‘chained CPI’ proposal included in President Obama’s budget is nothing more than a benefit cut disguised behind technical jargon,” he declared.

Whitehouse said he thinks the way Social Security currently calculates inflation already “shortchanges” senior citizens and should be changed to increase benefits – the exact opposite of Obama’s proposal. “I made a promise to the people of Rhode Island that I would always oppose cuts to Social Security, and I’m going to keep that promise,” Whitehouse said.

(more…)

U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse were among the 79 senators who voted Thursday night to get rid of a tax on sales of medical devices passed in 2010 to help fund President Obama’s health reform law.

The two Rhode Island senators joined 31 of their fellow Democrats and all 45 Republicans in voting to repeal the 2.3% excise tax on medical devices, which took effect Jan. 1. Getting rid of it would cost the federal government $29 billion from 2013 to 2022, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning Washington think-tank that opposed repealing it.

Whitehouse and another stalwart liberal, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, were among those who sided with the device industry on the repeal measure, which was introduced by Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah and has been the subject of a heavy lobbying effort.

Stephen Lane, chairman and chief venture officer of the Providence-based medical-device firm Ximedica, said at a manufacturing forum last year co-hosted by Congressmen David Cicilline and Jim Langevin that the tax was causing his industry to move production to Asia. Cicilline and Langevin voted to keep the tax, and Cicilline clashed over the question with his Republican opponent Brendan Doherty in a WPRI 12 debate last fall.

Jack Reed was not a fan of John Walsh, the Republican who was the last Comptroller of the Currency. But he’s getting along well with Thomas Curry, who took over in April, Kate Davidson reports for Politico:

Curry has acknowledged past mistakes, moved quickly to adopt lawmakers’ recommendations and brought in new blood with liberal bona fides at the upper levels of the agency.

By all accounts, his efforts are soothing tensions with some of the agency’s toughest critics. …

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who had called for the ouster of Curry’s predecessor, John Walsh, said Curry has “taken a lot of very positive steps” to improve the agency.

“I think he’s balanced, and I think he’s fair,” Reed said.

• Related: Reed giving up Senate Banking subcommittee to keep 2 others (Feb. 6)

Numbers guru Nate Silver says no senator is safer than Jack Reed heading into the 2014 elections.

“Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat, is quite popular in Rhode Island, one of the bluest states in the country, and this should be Democrats’ safest Senate race next year,” Silver wrote Wednesday in a FiveThirtyEight post analyzing whether the GOP can win back the Senate.

Silver gives Republicans a razor-thin 1% chance of defeating Reed on Nov. 4, 2014, even slimmer odds than their 3% chance of victory in New Mexico or 5% chances in Delaware, Hawaii, Virginia and Illinois.

Silver’s forecast shouldn’t be a surprise: the last Republican to win a U.S. Senate race in Rhode Island was Lincoln Chafee in 2000, following his father John’s four terms – and the last non-Chafee Republican to win was Jesse H. Metcalf back in 1930, when Herbert Hoover was president. (Metcalf was ousted in 1936.)

(more…)

It looks like U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse will get another chance to pass his “Buffett Rule.”

A growing number of reports from Washington indicate top Senate Democrats will make a version of the Buffett Rule – which would set a minimum tax rate for millionaires – a key part of their proposal to avert the so-called “sequester” of mandatory spending cuts set to take effect next month.

The Buffett Rule started out as an idea in an op-ed by Warren Buffett. After President Obama mentioned it in last year’s State of the Union address, Whitehouse quickly introduced legislation to put the measure into law. Whitehouse’s bill died in April when it failed to overcome a filibuster.

To pass the measure under normal Senate filibuster rules, Democrats would need every senator in their 55-member caucus to vote in favor and then win over five Republicans. That seems unlikely. But the idea’s continued prominence is another sign that Whitehouse has a feel for the legislative zeitgeist.

As for the fiscal impact, the CBO said Whitehouse’s “Buffett Rule” bill would raise $47 billion over 10 years. Whitehouse himself included the Buffett Rule in his new plan [pdf] to offset the sequester without spending cuts earlier this week, though he acknowledged the whole proposal was dead on arrival.

• Related: Not one, not two, but 18 views on Whitehouse’s ‘Buffett rule’ (April 16)

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed will get an early start to his 2014 re-election campaign with an all-star fundraiser later this month.

The reception organized by Reed’s longtime finance chief, Julie Andrews (not that one), will be held Sunday, Feb. 24 from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Garden Room of the Providence Biltmore Hotel. Suggested contributions are $100 to $1,000. Invitations to the event went out last week.

Reed, who isn’t on the ballot until next November, is taking the same approach as his colleague U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who kicked off his own re-election bid with a January 2011 event in the same location.

The fundraiser’s co-chairs are Reed’s three colleagues in Rhode Island’s congressional delegation: Whitehouse and Congressmen Jim Langevin and David Cicilline. The event also boasts a huge host committee that includes all five of the state’s general officers plus House Speaker Gordon Fox, Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed and six Democratic mayors. (See the full list after the jump.)

Three potential rivals for governor are all on Reed’s host committee – independent Gov. Lincoln Chafee, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and Treasurer Gina Raimondo – though the one Democratic candidate who’s actually announced so far, former Auditor General Ernie Almonte, is not.

Reed’s campaign had $1.9 million on hand as of Dec. 31, a spokesman said. A Public Policy Polling survey last month showed Reed with a 29-point point lead over Republican Brendan Doherty, his closest competitor in a set of hypothetical contests. He was first elected to the Senate in 1996.

(more…)

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed will give up his chairmanship of a finance-focused subcommittee to comply with Senate Democrats’ rule barring any member from having more than two coveted committee gavels, WPRI.com has learned.

Reed’s office said he’ll remain on the Senate Banking Committee but will no longer chair its Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment, which he’s led since Democrats took control of the Senate in 2007.

Reed was one of the few senators who chaired three subcommittees, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently moved to enforce a caucus rule that limits Democratic senators to two. Reed opted to give up his gavel on the banking panel in order to remain chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and the Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and Environment.

“Leading an Appropriations panel and the Seapower subcommittee are vital to delivering for Rhode Island,” Reed told WPRI.com in a statement. “My service on the Appropriations Committee offers broad opportunities to secure federal funding for our state and my work on the Seapower subcommittee allows me to help Rhode Island’s defense industry, which is important to our local economy and our national defense.”

(more…)

Zack Colman reports for The Hill:

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on Thursday outlined a slate of climate change actions that President Obama could execute with his own authority.

The lawmakers conveyed a bleak outlook for climate legislation this Congress, noting considerable Republican opposition in the House. But they said Obama’s climate comments during his Monday inaugural address raised the prospects for administrative action to address the issue. …

Whitehouse, Waxman and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) laid out a menu of options for executive action on climate change in a Thursday letter to Obama [pdf]. Among them were moves federal agencies could take to curb greenhouse gas emissions and enlisting national laboratories to pump out clean-energy technology. …

Whitehouse also suggested the federal government could use its procurement powers to strike deals with cleaner, sustainable contractors.

Whitehouse has made clear in the weeks since he won re-election last fall that one of his core priorities during his second term will be pushing Washington for action on climate change, as well as new efforts to protect the health of the sea through his bipartisan Senate Oceans Caucus.

“I think it’s going to take some hammering to open the window [of what's possible] up a bit, but the public is now so clearly behind doing something about climate change that it puts the Republican opposition in a very different – and I think, before long, untenable – position,” Whitehouse told me during an interview in his Capitol Hill office earlier this month.

With that in mind, on Thursday Whitehouse also restarted the series of weekly floor speeches about climate change he’s been giving for the past year. The video of yesterday’s edition is here.

​(photo: Whitehouse’s office)

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said Tuesday the United States needs to step up its support for opposition rebels in war-torn Syria, arguing they need America’s help just as the U.S. needed France to win independence from Britain – though he ruled out putting troops on the ground.

Read the rest of this story »

• Related: Reed: US on track to exit Afghanistan, fix Pakistan relations (Jan. 10)

​By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The U.S. remains on track to withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, and the relationship between American and Pakistani leaders is improving, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed told WPRI.com on Thursday after returning from a visit to the troubled region.

Read the rest of this story »

• Related: Senator Reed joins Levin for 14th trip to Afghanistan (Jan. 4)

​By Ted Nesi

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WPRI) – U.S. Sen. Jack Reed left Washington in secret on Thursday for an official visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan, WPRI.com has learned.

Read the rest of this story »

WPRI.com’s Ted Nesi is reporting from Capitol Hill this week.

WASHINGTON – Wayne Gretzky retired more than a decade ago, but he’s still inspiring congressional Democrats from Southern New England.

In separate interviews this week, Rhode Island U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and newly elected Mass. Congressman Joe Kennedy III both cited the wisdom of the legendary Canadian hockey star as a model for how they’ll approach the 113th Congress.

“If you remember the great Wayne Gretzky,” Whitehouse told WPRI.com, “he used to say you become a great hockey player not when you go to where the puck is but when you go to where the puck is going to be. And I think there’s four issues where the puck is going to be where we really need to be working hard even if it’s not the so-called issue of the moment.”

Whitehouse’s four issues: climate change, the oceans, cybersecurity, and streamlining the way health care gets delivered.

The next morning, Kennedy had the same lesson on his mind.

“Wayne Gretzky was famous for saying he doesn’t go where the puck is, he goes to where the puck’s going to be,” he said, arguing that members of Congress need to think the same way.

Informed that Senator Whitehouse had used Gretzky’s famous aphorism less than 24 hours earlier, Kennedy said, “Did he really? You’re kidding me!” He laughed and added: “Maybe he and I can talk about that.”

• Related: More stories from Ted Nesi’s trip to Washington this week

​(photo: Wikipedia)

​By Ted Nesi

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WPRI) – Seven years ago Elizabeth Warren was blogging for a liberal website as the U.S. Senate debated a tough new bankruptcy bill, pointing out her disagreements with the lawmakers. On Thursday, she was sworn in as the Senate’s newest member.

Read the rest of this story »

WPRI.com’s Ted Nesi is reporting from Capitol Hill this week.

WASHINGTON – Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren’s class was an important one for future congressman Joe Kennedy III, and not just because he and his teacher would soon be serving together in Congress.

Kennedy, 32, met his wife, Lauren Birchfield, when they were both students in Warren’s class. “He sat in the front row, on my left, and Lauren was in the back row on my right,” Warren recalled Thursday in an interview with WPRI.com.

Kennedy and Birchfield married last month. “Joe tells me there are five couples from that class, and I take credit for all of them!” Warren said.

“She was and is an amazing professor,” Kennedy, who received his law degree in 2009, said in a separate interview. “There’s a reason she always wins the best-teacher award.”

He recalled: “I’d get lost in the intricacies of the bankruptcy code, and I’d go up to her office, and this was when she was the overseer of TARP – and she’d say, ‘Yes, senator, yes, senator, I need to go because I have a student here.’”

“He was a good student,” Warren said, laughing.

(more…)

By ​Ted Nesi

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WPRI) – U.S. Sen. Jack Reed is still frustrated that President Obama didn’t push harder to include in this week’s fiscal cliff deal the entire tax increase he backed on the campaign trail, and is already ringing alarm bells another potential fiscal crisis later this winter.

Read the rest of this story »

WASHINGTON – Robert Caro’s magisterial biography of LBJ gets a reader thinking about what it takes to be an effective senator. It’s not just legislative smarts, and it’s not just political skill – and it’s different in different eras. Johnson himself might have had trouble if he stepped in to take Harry Reid’s place today.

During a 45-minute interview this afternoon with U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who recently won a second six-year term with 65% of the vote, I asked him which senators he admires and how he thinks a lawmaker can be effective in the chamber. Here’s what he had to say:

I’ve had the pleasure and the privilege of serving with some of the real titans in the Senate: Robert C. Byrd, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd. My very strong feeling is that the things that make you an effective senator are:

Seniority, which you can’t do much about – it is what it is – but as time goes by you need to be ramping it up the match your seniority.

Very hard work, and I demand that of my staff as well – you can outwork other offices, you can have the report prepared in advance because you know where the public is going to be.

Gradually building enough expertise on an issue so when the discussion comes and you have something to say, people say, “Oh, this is an issue that Whitehouse has put a lot of work into and I’ve heard him before on this – he has credibility with me – I trust him.” You don’t completely cede your vote to another senator, but you trust people more on some things than you do on others, and you trust some people more than you do on others because you’ve seen them put the work in.

And then a certain amount of the rest is just timing and finding your moment where the things converge, so while seniority accrues, hard work and trying to pick the Wayne Gretzky puck locations, and being there when the time comes so that you can influence the debate in the right way, I think, is key.

More quotes from my interview with Whitehouse still to come.

​By Ted Nesi​

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WPRI) – They didn’t love it, but in the end all four Democrats in Rhode Island’s congressional delegation stood by President Obama and voted for this week’s “fiscal cliff” compromise, once again standing with their party’s leadership during a major confrontation.

Read the rest of this story »

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed says he hasn’t made up his mind yet about whether to support a push by some of his colleagues to change the Senate’s filibuster rules to make it harder for Republicans to block legislation.

“I haven’t made a conclusion,” Reed told WPRI 12′s Tim White last week. “I am looking very carefully.”

“I am – as I have had to do with everything – thinking very carefully about what we’re doing so that I can make the best possible decision on behalf of all Rhode Islanders and indeed, when it comes to procedures in the Senate, for the country at large,” Reed said. “Not just for the moment, but for the future of the country.”

(more…)

​By Tim White

​WASHINGTON, D.C. (WPRI) – Rhode Island’s congressional delegation is expressing support for President Barack Obama’s order assembling a task force charged with delivering gun safety recommendations by January.

Read the rest of this story »

Will Massachusetts have six U.S. Senate elections in the space of eight years?

It certainly looks possible after Thursday afternoon’s announcement that Susan Rice is withdrawing from consideration as President Obama’s next secretary of state, opening the door for the president to appoint Mass. U.S. Sen. John Kerry.

If Kerry gets the job, Massachusetts could have a special election as soon as June to fill Kerry’s seat for the reminder of his term, which ends in January 2015. Potential candidates include a long list of Democrats – though not Congressman-elect Joe Kennedy III – and Republicans Scott Brown or Bill Weld.

A special election next year would be the fifth time Massachusetts residents have gone to the polls to choose a U.S. senator since November 2006.

Bay State voters re-elected Ted Kennedy for the final time that year, then re-elected Kerry in 2008, elected Scott Brown to finish Kennedy’s term in 2010, and replaced Brown with Elizabeth Warren last month. And special election or not, they will vote for U.S. senator again in 2014 when Kerry’s current term ends.

​(photo: AP/Gerald Herbert)

The U.S. Senate’s biannual committee shuffle is over, and Rhode Island’s two senators are staying put.

Jack Reed will continue to serve on the same three committees when the new session starts in January, and Sheldon Whitehouse will continue to serve on the same five, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Wednesday.

Seniority is the coin of the realm in the U.S. Senate, and Rhode Island’s senators continue to move up the ladder. Reed ranked 33rd overall during the current Congress, and Whitehouse ranked 67th – up from 99th when he was first sworn in almost six years ago.

Reed is on fewer committees than other lawmakers because his three assignments are coveted ones: the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate Banking Committee.

(more…)

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Fresh off his re-election victory, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse says he’s optimistic the Senate will approve new rules making it harder for Republicans to block bills, and he’s prepared to break with President Obama on a budget deal if it cuts Social Security or Medicare benefits.

Read the rest of this story »

A terrific piece from Frank Phillips and Michael Levenson runs down the potential musical chairs in the Bay State if President Obama decides to appoint U.S. Sen. John Kerry as defense secretary or secretary of state. From The Boston Globe:

A Senate vacancy would probably create a comeback scenario for Senator Scott Brown, the Republican who lost the seat to Democrat Elizabeth Warren in last week’s election. …

Among the high-profile Democratic officeholders who are expressing interest are three of the state’s congressmen: Edward J. Markey of Malden, the 66-year old dean of the congressional delegation; Michael E. Capuano of Somerville, who ran second to Martha Coakley in the 2009 Senate primary; and Stephen F. Lynch of South Boston, a conservative Democrat who won his seat in a 2001 special election in which several liberals divided the vote on the left.

US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who has gained the attention of the political world by prosecuting former speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, has also been mentioned as a potential candidate, despite her lack of electoral experience. …

Coakley has not ruled out a run, but insiders said she would not be a Democratic favorite after her poor performance in the 2010 special election.

Governor Patrick, the state’s leading Democrat, told The Globe he won’t run for Senate if there’s a vacancy. If Kerry does resign the seat he’s held for 27 years, Patrick would have to appoint an interim senator to fill the job until a special election is over. Kerry’s current term expires in 2014.

Phillips and Levenson also report former Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II (father of the newly elected 4th District congressman) and former Congressman Marty Meehan won’t run, while former Gov. Bill Weld might consider it but would defer to Scott Brown.

Looking ahead to 2014, the reporters also mention three potential candidates for Massachusetts governor (Patrick is term-limited): Charlie Baker, the Republican who lost to Patrick in 2010; Treasurer Steven Grossman; and Lt. Gov. Tim Murray.

(photo: Gerald Herbert/AP)