16-04-2025
‘Never had an auditor do something like this.' Diana DiZoglio fights, polarizes her fellow Democrats.
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Practically, DiZoglio's hard-charging approach has yet to realize the audit itself. Even potential litigation over whether the Legislature has to comply sits in limbo.
Politically, however, the fight has defined her short tenure as state auditor, and elevated DiZoglio and the relatively obscure constitutional office she holds. The path she chose has led to an odd duality: She's both isolated among party leadership, and simultaneously able to claim wide support among the public. Some Democratic activists view her as a rising star and natural at retail politics; others chafe at her approach, likening her to an unnecessary bomb-thrower.
In other words: DiZoglio may be the most polarizing political figure in the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
'To come out in public, take a stand and say, 'This is my mission,' it has a lot of people perplexed. This is a first. You've never had an auditor do something like this,' said Melvin Poindexter, a Massachusetts Democratic National Committee member.
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In contrast to DiZoglio, the role of state auditor previously felt more akin to a low-profile detective, he said, a 'Columbo backstage making sure everybody is doing what they're supposed to do.' By statute, her office must audit hundreds of agencies and departments every three years, and the auditor's website touts her as the '
State Auditor Diana DiZoglio spoke during a rally of public employee unions in front of the State House in 2023.
Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff
DiZoglio doesn't work in the wings. Last summer, when it appeared she might temporarily serve as acting governor, she
When circumstances robbed her of the temporary role, DiZoglio released it anyway. She
'When I go to town committee meetings, people ask the same question: Is this all a prelude for something else?' Poindexter said. That includes whispers of an eventual run for governor, he said. 'That's one of the things people have tossed out there.'
In a Globe interview, DiZoglio waved off waging a Democratic challenge to Healey, who
next fall, without directly addressing whether she could one day vie for higher office.
She also said she doesn't have 'any plans' yet for 2026, when she, too, would be up for reelection.
'It's not an election year, and I have no plans to run for governor. I am simply focused on the work of my office,' DiZoglio said. 'It's the biggest challenge of my life just to stay standing and continue to say, 'The people voted for this, and the law needs to be followed.''
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The feud between DiZoglio and the Legislature's leaders
has laid bare an extraordinary, and long-running, friction between constitutional branches and the Democrats who control them. DiZoglio told lawmakers in January that she intended to
use of nondisclosure agreements dating back years.
Lawmakers have resisted every step of the way. House leaders hired an outside attorney, arguing an audit could violate the constitutional separation of powers, which allows the chambers to set their own rules. The Senate launched a subcommittee to craft its response, taking testimony last week from a panel of attorneys and experts, most of whom warned a legislative audit is unconstitutional and that DiZoglio has 'impairments' to her own independence given she is a former lawmaker who's spoken repeatedly about probing the bodies in which she once worked.
DiZoglio declined to testify, and cast the hearing as a 'kangaroo court.'
'This committee, regardless of what the media likes to talk about, is not going after the auditor,' state Senator Cindy Friedman told reporters afterward about
the chamber's efforts. 'We're going after the question.'
State Auditor Diana DiZoglio held up a sign during last month's annual St. Patrick's Day Breakfast touting the support a ballot question, which gave her the authority to audit the Legislature, received at last November's ballot.
Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff
DiZoglio's targets have varied. She publicly
about the goal of her audit. She has openly criticized Attorney General Andrea Campbell for not answering her request to allow her to bring a lawsuit against the Legislature over her audit attempts.
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The two Democrats have also
after DiZoglio's office issued a letter calling a massive rezoning law advancing multi-family housing known as the MBTA Communities Act an '
a pointed rebuke from Campbell, who's
DiZoglio wasted no time, either, punching back against even a one-time ally, state Representative Mike Connolly, a progressive Cambridge Democrat who supported DiZoglio's ballot question. In late February, he
DiZoglio's decision to produce a
12 minutes later.
'Shame on ANY Democrat who tries to tie this 72% voter approved mandate, a democratically decided law, to Trump,' she
That combative style makes some Democratic officials careful in openly prodding her, particularly given what she lacks in Beacon Hill allies she can wield in public support for the audit.
'Let's say you use my name in this article,' said one Democratic town committee chair, who spoke on the condition that their name not be used. 'And I say, 'Diana has been an incredible auditor. But I'd like to see her do better on the (MBTA) Communities Act.' I would be dead to her. It would be, I'm on the other side, and I'm the enemy.'
DiZoglio swept into office in 2022 as part of a history-making class of women, who
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That dynamic offered an opportunity to create a 'power bloc' of women working together at the highest reaches of state government, said Jacquetta Van Zandt, a Democratic
strategist. 'Instead,' she said of DiZoglio, 'she's too busy tearing them down.'
'She's trying to make this office as powerful as the other constitutional offices. But I think her approach is wrong,' Van Zandt added. 'She's losing ground with people like me.'
DiZoglio said she's never hidden her goals as auditor, or ways of accomplishing them. As a state representative in 2018, for example, she bucked leadership on the House floor,
'My platform was presented very clearly, and my style was always very apparent. And some people like my style and some people don't,' DiZoglio told the Globe. 'That doesn't change that 72 percent of voters in this commonwealth went out and voted for this initiative.'
Indeed, her approach has drawn pushback but not shock in the legislative bodies she once served.
'This is her modus operandi. She's just a puncher,' said one Democratic lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 'This is her comfort zone.'
It also hasn't changed what DiZoglio said can be an 'isolating' experience. She said she'll take photos with rank-and-file lawmakers at events, only to be asked not to post them online. Healey, Campbell, and others have publicly said they voted for the ballot question, but the constitutional questions have muted any full-fledged backing from other elected officials.
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'You feel very alone,' she said.
Not entirely. Liz Bradt, Salem's Democratic city committee chair, said DiZoglio 'has inspired the people of Massachusetts' with the ballot question. Ray Gottwald, the longtime chair of Harwich's local Democratic committee, said DiZoglio spoke at a committee event on the Cape in February, arriving with citations to honor party activists.
She works the room, remembers people's names, 'she calls people back,' said Gottwald, a former administrative manager in the auditor's office under Bump. DiZoglio is a regular at local committee meetings, speaking to activists in
'I'm 72 years old, and I've been involved in politics a long time. I've never met a more effective politician than Diana DiZoglio,' Gottwald said. 'I sincerely haven't.'
Matt Stout can be reached at
