Second Mass. Republican jumps into Senate race

Republicans in Massachusetts have a second candidate interested in the race for the seat Secretary of State John Kerry resigned earlier this month.

Gabriel Gomez announced his candidacy Tuesday with a bilingual web video introducing himself to voters.

"I spent my career as a Navy SEAL and a businessman right here in Boston," he said. "I'm not a politician so I'll have a very different kind of campaign."

For either Gomez or State Rep. Dan Winslow, who said he was exploring a run last week, to appear on the ballot, they must collect 10,000 signatures by February 27, a deadline which is just over two weeks away. If more than one contender enters the race, a primary will be held April 30 to select a party candidate for the June special election to follow Kerry.

Since President Barack Obama selected Kerry as his next head of the State Department, a number of Republicans in the Bay State have announced they will not run, including former Sen. Scott Brown, who won the seat in a 2010 special election but lost his November bid for a full term against Democrat Elizabeth Warren. Brown said in an interview Tuesday that he could have raised the funds and was encouraged to jump in, but needs to "recharge the engines and spend some time with my family."

As Brown, former Gov. Gov. William Weld and former state Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei announced they would not run, speculation swirled that the wife or son of former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney might enter the field. But they, too, are sitting this race out, and political watchers began to wonder how a Republican candidate could collect enough signatures to be on the ballot -- especially with the weekend blizzard which shut down the Northeastern state.

Two Democrats have declared their efforts for the seat: Rep. Ed Markey, the longest serving member of the Massachusetts delegation to Washington, and Rep. Stephen Lynch. Markey has the backing of Kerry and several other Massachusetts Democrats, as well as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Gomez wrote in a statement accompanying his announcement that Washington harbors "a lot of unproductive noise, and bickering, and I see two parties attacking each other at all times over every issue." It is a place of "gridlock" and "severe dysfunction," he said, but said he is optimistic that he can be "a voice for bipartisanship, reasonableness and common sense."

"Look at my training -- serving my country, U.S. Naval Academy, Navy aircraft carrier pilot, Navy SEAL, successful private sector, business career," he said. "I'm not a politician, and there will be times when folks will ask me questions about the inner working of politics that I don't know about. I'm a quick study, I'll figure all the political jargon out, but I'm not going to adopt it."