Anthony Amore

Anthony Amore (Republican Party) ran for election for Massachusetts Auditor of the Commonwealth. He lost in the general election on November 8, 2022.

Amore completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Anthony Amore earned a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Rhode Island and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He also graduated from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and completed professional programs in leadership and national security from Harvard University. Amore's professional experience includes working as the director of security and chief investigator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, as an officer with the U.S. Immigration Service, as a special agent with the Federal Aviation Administration’s Security Division, and as an author. He was also appointed as assistant federal security director with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration. His mission in that appointment included rebuilding security at Logan Airport after the attacks of 9/11.^[1]

Elections

2022

General election

General election for Massachusetts Auditor of the Commonwealth

Diana DiZoglio defeated Anthony Amore, Gloria Caballero-Roca, Dominic Giannone III, and Daniel Riek in the general election for Massachusetts Auditor of the Commonwealth on November 8, 2022.

	Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Diana DiZoglio (D)	55.1	1,310,773
	Anthony Amore (R)	37.7	897,223
	Gloria Caballero-Roca (Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts)	2.9	68,646
	Dominic Giannone III (Workers Party)	2.2	51,877
	Daniel Riek (L)	2.0	48,625
	Other/Write-in votes	0.1	1,648

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 2,378,792
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Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for Massachusetts Auditor of the Commonwealth

Diana DiZoglio defeated Chris Dempsey in the Democratic primary for Massachusetts Auditor of the Commonwealth on September 6, 2022.

	Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Diana DiZoglio	54.4	372,597
	Chris Dempsey	45.4	311,156
	Other/Write-in votes	0.2	1,082

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 684,835
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Eileen Duff (D)

Republican primary election

Republican primary for Massachusetts Auditor of the Commonwealth

Anthony Amore advanced from the Republican primary for Massachusetts Auditor of the Commonwealth on September 6, 2022.

	Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Anthony Amore	99.4	201,280
	Other/Write-in votes	0.6	1,130

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 202,410
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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2018

See also: Massachusetts Secretary of State election, 2018

General election

General election for Massachusetts Secretary of State

Incumbent William Galvin defeated Anthony Amore and Juan Sanchez in the general election for Massachusetts Secretary of State on November 6, 2018.

	Candidate	%	Votes
✔	William Galvin (D)	68.2	1,877,065
	Anthony Amore (R)	24.4	671,300
	Juan Sanchez (Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts)	3.6	100,428
	Other/Write-in votes	3.8	103,872

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 2,752,665
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for Massachusetts Secretary of State

Incumbent William Galvin defeated Josh Zakim in the Democratic primary for Massachusetts Secretary of State on September 4, 2018.

	Candidate	%	Votes
✔	William Galvin	67.6	433,086
	Josh Zakim	32.4	208,011

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 641,097
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Republican primary election

Republican primary for Massachusetts Secretary of State

Anthony Amore advanced from the Republican primary for Massachusetts Secretary of State on September 4, 2018.

		Candidate
✔		Anthony Amore

	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

Anthony Amore completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Amore's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I am running for State Auditor to be a watchdog of taxpayer money on Beacon Hill. I believe in checks and balances, and with Massachusetts likely to be led entirely by Democrats next year it is critical that a Republican serve as a check on one-party rule. I am a socially moderate, fiscally conservative Republican endorsed by Governor Charlie Baker.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

Protect Taxpayer Funds
Independent Watchdog
Audit the Auditor's Office

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I care deeply about making sure state government has a watchdog to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. If elected I will start by launching a truly independent third-party audit of the Auditor's Office. For years the Auditor's Office has failed to meet is legal requirement to audit all government agencies on time. This has led to disastrous consequences and major failures by some of our state agencies.

Another top priority of mine will be to launch a comprehensive audit of the University of Massachusetts to make sure parents are really getting what they pay for with expensive tuition bills. The cost of public higher education must remain low in order to offer opportunities to low-income and first-generation students. With a hike in tuition this year it's more important than ever that the next State Auditor examine the billions of dollars in construction costs and decreased student enrollment that are putting financial strain on the UMass system.

What qualities does this office possess that makes it a unique and important part of the state government and legal system?

The State Auditor should focus on delivering a professional office, not a political one. The Auditor's Office is responsible for overseeing all 209 state agencies in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and remaining an independent watchdog on Beacon Hill. For 80 years the Auditor has been a Democrat, which creates a conflict of interest because a Democratic Auditor will not want to audit members of his or her own party who controls the Legislature. I am the only candidate in this race who can remain apolitical and focus on being a watchdog for Beacon Hill rather than a lapdog.

What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?

I believe in two-party government. Checks and balances is something that every one of us learns in elementary school. However, too often our state governments become polarized and led by a single party. This leads to waste, fraud, corruption, and inefficiencies. I follow Governor Baker's bipartisan model of "collaborative friction" in state government which can only come with having two teams on the field. With the next governor likely to be a Democrat it will be important that a moderate Republican like me can serve as a watchdog over taxpayer spending on Beacon Hill.

What responsibilities of this office do you personally consider the most important?

The State Auditor must have its own house in order before examining other agencies. Based on research conducted by my campaign, we know of several shortcomings in the Auditor's Office:

-- Data used in audits are outdated by years by the time they are released in a report.
-- Staffers are frequently rotated between multiples audits, creating misunderstandings of complex problems in the inner workings of a state entity or agency.
-- The Auditor’s reports consistently do not mention the steps state agencies and entities have taken to rectify problems before, during, and after deficiencies are identified.
-- There is a history in the Auditor’s Office of mixing politics with official business and issuing “sensationalized press releases” of politically motivated audits with “grossly mischaracterizing” findings.

Finally, the Auditor’s Office has been allowed for too long to be crippled by extreme underfunding.

A lopsided Legislature, dominated by the party that also controls the Auditor’s Office, has level-funded the $20 million annual auditing budget despite a failure of the office to meet statutory obligations.

By comparison, budgets for the other constitutional offices – Secretary of State ($54MM), Attorney General ($57MM), and Treasurer ($1.2B) – are multiples higher.

I endorsed legislation to more than double the State Auditor’s baseline budget to $42 million, which is a similar amount to what other states with similarly-sized budgets spend to audit their spending.

I will address these problems by speaking truth to power as an independent auditor accountable to the voters, not the Beacon Hill establishment. I will:
-- Take a proactive posture to auditing, ensuring problems are discovered quickly.
-- Reform the office’s broken processes for performing government audits.

-- Act as a good government advocate who will pressure the Legislature and Governor to re

Are there any little-known powers or responsibilities held by this office that you believe more people should be aware of?

The State Auditor has the power to compel state agencies to produce all records by taking them to court. It is just shy of having complete subpoena powers and I intend to make this power more widely known, and used, if elected.

Do you believe that it's beneficial for holders of this office to have previous experience in government or politics?

Yes. Too often politicians are elected who are inexperienced to run the bureaucracies they are charged with overseeing. I believe this leads to many of the problems in government we see today. I am the only candidate in this race who has done this sort of work. During my 30 year career, I have conducted audits, investigations, and inspections in both the private and public sectors.

Early in my career, I was an immigration officer for the federal government helping to process refugees of war seeking asylum in the United States. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11 I was selected to lead the new TSA branch at Logan International Airport where the terrorists were able to board aircrafts. Leading a team of 1,200 TSA agents I revamped air travel security and was later sent to Washington to lead the TSA's Compliance and Enforcement Division. I audited the security policies of airports across the United States and helped implement our reforms at Logan Airport on a national level.

For the past 17 years I have been the Director of Security and Chief Investigator at the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum in Boston, protecting priceless works of art and chasing the thieves behind the infamous 1990 heist.

Over my career I have reformed security at the site of the country's largest terrorism failure and reformed security at the site of the largest private property theft in human history. I won't flinch when it comes to confronting bureaucrats on Beacon Hill.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

Campaign website

Amore’s campaign website stated the following:

“

Audit the Auditor’s Office

As Auditor, Anthony’s top priority would be to audit the Office of the State Auditor. The Auditor’s Office has a history of not meeting the legal responsibility of auditing the Commonwealth’s 209 agencies at least once every three years. Over the past 12 years, the number of annual audits performed by the Auditor’s Office has steadily declined. As a result, Massachusetts residents have seen government failures that could have been prevented

For the first time, the Auditor’s Office will be audited by a truly independent third-party auditing firm to assess the office’s shortcomings and recommend additional changes. Previously, the office has been audited by the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers, and Treasurers, which is incentivized to offer glowing reports on its own members.

In addition, Anthony will reform the office’s entire approach to auditing, which is broken:

Data used in audits are outdated by years by the time they are released in a report.

Staffers are frequently rotated between multiples audits, creating misunderstandings of complex problems in the inner workings of a state entity or agency.

The Auditor’s reports consistently do not mention the steps state agencies and entities have taken to rectify problems before, during, and after deficiencies are identified.

There is a history in the Auditor’s Office of mixing politics with official business and issuing “sensationalized press releases” of politically motivated audits with “grossly mischaracterizing” findings.

Finally, the Auditor’s Office has been allowed for too long to be crippled by extreme underfunding.

A lopsided Legislature, dominated by the party that also controls the Auditor’s Office, has level-funded the $20 million annual auditing budget despite a failure of the office to meet statutory obligations.

By comparison, budgets for the other constitutional offices – Secretary of State ($54MM), Attorney General ($57MM), and Treasurer ($1.2B) – are multiples higher.

Anthony endorsed legislation to more than double the State Auditor’s baseline budget to $42 million, which is a similar amount to what other states with similarly-sized budgets spend to audit their spending.

Anthony Amore will address these problems by speaking truth to power as an independent auditor accountable to the voters, not the Beacon Hill establishment. He will

Take a proactive posture to auditing, ensuring problems are discovered quickly.

Reform the office’s broken processes for performing government audits.

Act as a good government advocate who will pressure the Legislature and Governor to responsibly fund the Auditor’s Office so it may finally meet its legal requirement.

Advocate for Total Transparency

As an independent auditor, Anthony will strongly advocate for increased transparency across state government while leading by example.

Under Anthony’s leadership, the Auditor’s Office will adopt a “presumption of openness” policy similar to the federal policy enacted by U.S. Department of Justice.

One of the office’s first action items will be to eliminate its cumbersome and difficult-to-navigate process of posting audit findings on Mass.gov. A new, simplified website will allow residents to search by keywords or the name of a state agency and quickly uncover the findings and recommendations of previous audits. The Auditor’s Office will work closely with the Commonwealth’s Inspector General to model the new website on the IG’s groundbreaking work done with the CHTRU Payroll website, which allows residents to quickly uncover the salaries and spending habits of public employees and state agencies.

Anthony will use the Office of the State Auditor to forcefully advocate that the Legislature and Governor’s Office conform with the habits of 49 other state governments and allow some or all of their records to be made available to the public. As Auditor, Anthony Amore will incorporate abuse of the public records laws into audits of the Governor’s Office, Legislature, or any state agency that is not acting in good faith.

Finally, Anthony fully supports changing state law to allow the State Auditor to conduct audits of the Legislature. If the Legislature fails to pass these reforms, then Anthony has promised to support and campaign for a ballot question to make the Legislature subject to the public records laws, open meeting laws, and audits by the State Auditor.

Tackle Issues Important to Families

Cost of College: Are Families Getting What They Pay For?

As the father of two daughters – with one at UMass – Anthony believes it is time to stop talking about the cost of college and do something about it. As an independent auditor, Anthony will take a hard look at spending and rooting out waste. The answer is not always to increase state funding because throwing more money at wasteful spending only buys you more waste.

An audit of state higher education should examine the true cost of college, whether on-campus or on-line, and expose those factors that drive up tuition and fees. The audit should answer the question: Are students and families are really getting what they are paying for?

Walking across the Amherst campus, Anthony was amazed at all the construction and then saw dollar signs. It’s the parents and students who are paying for it through tuition and state taxes. Is anyone checking to be sure projects are managed properly? Why are there great disparities in similar projects from campus to campus?

Why did the new parking garage at UMass Boston cost $50,000 per parking space when the Bridgewater State garage cost $20,000 per space?

Why did the UMass Boston dorms cost $527 per square foot when 4 miles away, at MassArt, the cost was $345 per square foot?

Even before the pandemic began, student enrollment was in decline at public colleges and universities. UMass was unprepared for this event which has only been exacerbated since the pandemic. Between 2019 and 2021, state universities have seen a net decline of 11 percent in student enrollment. If our universities aren’t collecting the tuition to pay for their spending habits, then Anthony believes costs should be better controlled.

The Auditor’s Office can, and should, be playing a larger role revealing the cause of the exploding growth in costs at our state colleges and universities. Under Anthony, the Auditor’s Office will root out the wasteful spending that has led to ballooning tuition payments and target a reduced growth in higher education that remains in line with the growth of our state budget.

Audit the Unaudited

By her own estimate, the current State Auditor has admitted that up to 30 percent of all state agencies have not seen completed audits within a three-year timeline as required by law. Without timely audits, we do not know if the Commonwealth is providing robust and accountable services for its people. Among the examples:

Cannabis Control Commission

A recent hack of personal data stored by a state vendor revealed the Cannabis Control Commission has never been audited. The commission that is supposed to ensure the fair and complete oversight of legal retail and medical marijuana sales has no oversight.

This raises important questions:

Is the personal, medical and product purchase information of the state’s 69,000 registered marijuana patients being adequately protected from hacking?

Are state agencies and vendors who collect personal information on state employees, licensed cannabis workers, and others doing enough to prevent unauthorized access to the data?

Is the Cannabis Control Commission fulfilling its obligations to the taxpayers by providing proper oversight to the cannabis industry, including regular and rigorous inspections of facilities and operations to prevent illegal activity and diversion of product?

Recently the Legislature granted the Cannabis Control Commission even more oversight of this industry, and we need to understand how and why the CCC has failed to deliver an equitable marijuana industry and has jeopardized the personal information of thousands all because of lax oversight. This is why Massachusetts needs an independent auditor who will stand up to Beacon Hill insiders and criticize sacred cows like the Cannabis Control Commission, which has inexplicably never been audited.

Unemployment Insurance

Another area of state government going unaudited is the unemployment insurance system, which paid out $33 billion over two years to residents impacted by the pandemic. Of this amount, $4 billion was flagged for potential errors and the state is looking to recover or forgive $2.3 billion in overpayments made incorrectly. The next State Auditor must take a holistic look at our public benefits, which are among the most generous in the nation, and compare them against our insurance trust fund solvency which has struggled to maintain adequate financing and places an exceptional burden on employers. Anthony has endorsed proposed spending by Governor Baker to replenish the fund with $300 million in one-time funds to make sure that businesses aren’t on the hook.

Nursing Homes

A third instance of unmet oversight is in the Commonwealth’s nursing home industry. While the State Auditor has previously flagged issues with MassHealth payments made to nursing home administrators, never before has the Auditor looked comprehensively at the systematic ways in which out-of-state operators may be using public dollars in pass-through schemes to inflate the salaries and revenue of CEOs and investor groups at the expense of residents and staffers.

For Anthony, this issue is personal. His paternal grandmother died in an overcrowded nursing home, and if elected he will fight for seniors who deserve dignity in retirement.

Preventing Predictable Problems

As Auditor, Anthony will establish a Waste Prevention Unit within the Auditor’s Office to examine legislative and regulatory proposals in order to identify and bring attention to potential problem areas. The Waste Prevention Unit would play a vital role in applying to state government the wise proverb: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Expanded Driver’s Licenses

New state law will grant Massachusetts driver’s licenses to immigrants who live in the state without proper permission from U.S. Immigration authorities and contrary to federal law. Regardless of your stance on this issue, one thing is clear: the beleaguered Registry of Motor Vehicles is not up to the task of sorting through foreign-issued documentation to ascertain the actual identity and age of license applicants.

As a former member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its predecessors, Anthony has dealt firsthand with the complexity of confirming the identity of immigrants and even helped to process Bosnian refugees to resettle in the United States.

How will an RMV clerk know a foreign-issued birth certificate or other document is real or a forgery?

If this legislation becomes law, the Auditor’s Office must play a role in ensuring the RMV develops the regulations and procedures that deny would-be criminals to establish fake identities by abusing an ill-conceived system.

Labor and Workers Rights

Anthony respects the important contribution of labor unions in Massachusetts. He was raised by a dedicated member of the Steelworkers Union and personally served as a union steward with the American Federation of Government Employees. He believes that our public employees are vital parts of our community and will honor their expertise and commitment to public service if elected.

Anthony believes the Taxpayer Protection Act (Pacheco Act) has advantages and disadvantages. It strengthens our ability to offer good-paying jobs with great retirement benefits to state employees of the Commonwealth who are vested. This system is sustainable and favorable because the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Trust (PRIM) has continually made wise investments on behalf of those who rely on our state pension system.

At the same time, minority-owned contractors are unable to work with the Commonwealth because they often cannot meet the law’s requirements to offer wages and benefits on par with those of public employees. In order to address our state’s racial wealth gap, Anthony believes that the state’s Supplier Diversity Office should be granted flexibility when recommending women and minority-owned firms for state contracts. Similar reviews of the law may be warranted when determining the trade-off between good-paying jobs versus overall public benefits in areas such as climate change resiliency.^[2]

”

—Anthony Amore’s campaign website (2022)^[3]

2018

Ballotpedia biographical submission form

The candidate completed Ballotpedia's biographical information submission form:

“

Is there anything you would like to add?

An acclaimed author, Anthony has written two national bestsellers: Stealing Rembrandts and The Art of the Con. He is a columnist for The Observer and has written opinion pieces for numerous publications including the New York Times and the Boston Herald. He is a frequent guest on national and international network television, including BBC, CNN, CBS, NPR, and others.

Amore is serving his second term as a Swampscott Town Meeting Member and previously served on the Swampscott Historical Commission.^[2]

”

—Anthony Amore^[1]

External links

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Candidate

Massachusetts Auditor of the Commonwealth

Personal

Footnotes

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 Information submitted on Ballotpedia’s biographical information submission form on October 16, 2018
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
↑ Anthony Amore’s campaign website, “Issues,” accessed October 28, 2022

[bio-1] 1.0 ^1.1 Information submitted on Ballotpedia’s biographical information submission form on October 16, 2018

[quotedisclaimer-2] 2.0 ^2.1 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.

[3] Anthony Amore’s campaign website, “Issues,” accessed October 28, 2022

[1]

[2]

[3]

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Anthony Amore

Contents

Biography

Elections

2022

General election

General election for Massachusetts Auditor of the Commonwealth

Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for Massachusetts Auditor of the Commonwealth

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Republican primary election

Republican primary for Massachusetts Auditor of the Commonwealth

2018

General election

General election for Massachusetts Secretary of State

Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for Massachusetts Secretary of State

Republican primary election

Republican primary for Massachusetts Secretary of State

Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

Campaign website

2018

Ballotpedia biographical submission form

See also

External links

Footnotes

Information about voting

2025 Elections

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2024 Election analysis

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Public Policy

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