More From Gabrieli

The Associated Press has picked up the Gabrieli for governor story and has the following quote from Chris Gabrieli himself:

"There are a lot of people in the state who know me and feel I'm up to the task, or people who feel they know what the state needs who think I should run because there's something missing in the current crop," Gabrieli said Tuesday.
[...]
Gabrieli said his thinking now has nothing to do with Reilly's choice.

"You'd have to be nuts to consider running for office as some kind of payback," he said.

I still think that Gabrieli, or anyone else who wants to run as a Democrat, is going to have a tough time getting enough support at the convention to get on the ballot. If he had started all this before the caucuses, he may have been able to get himself a foothold there. As it stands now, Gabrieli not only needs the signatures of 500 delegates but also the votes of around 800 delegates. The bulk of the delegates at the convention are already committed to Deval Patrick and Tom Reilly. To be sure, the convention is not until June and a lot can happen between now and then. Still, many of those delegates were elected at the caucuses after pledging their support for a particular candidate. I can't imagine that right now there are 800 of them willing to switch their allegiance to someone who is swooping in at the last minute.

Gabrieli will be on WGBH's Greater Boston with Emily Rooney tomorrow. I'm very interested to see what he has to say about all this.