Donald M. Berwick 68, a lecturer on health care policy at Harvard Medical School, announced Monday that he will run for governor of Massachusetts in 2014.

The progressive Democrat and former Obama administration health care official revealed his plans in a press release posted on his websitea quiet campaign launch timed in part, he said in a phone interview Tuesday, to help rally support for his fellow Democrat, U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey. The longtime Malden congressman will face voters in a special election next Tuesday in his bid for the Commonwealths open Senate seat.

Though Berwick has never held elected office, he said he is encouraged by the record and interest of Massachusetts voters in newcomers to politics like me.

Berwick, who holds degrees from the Medical School and the Kennedy School, spent years as a celebrated advocate for health care reform while sitting on various advisory committees and councils.

Yet his previous experience working in government has not been without controversy. In July 2010, President Obama appointed Berwick, then a longtime faculty member at the Medical School and the School of Public Health, as administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, during recess, temporarily bypassing Senate approval. But as Berwick helped implement the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administrations landmark 2010 health care law, he came under fire from conservatives for his advocacy of redistribution of wealth in health care as well as his supposed support for health care rationinga charge he has adamantly denied. With Senate Republicans vowing to block Berwicks confirmation hearing, he resigned after nearly 17 months as chief and returned to Massachusetts. Over a year later, he embarked on a listening tour of the state to explore a possible gubernatorial run.

Berwicks trajectory has been compared to that of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, another liberal Harvard professor who ran for elected office in Massachusetts following a stint in Washington D.C.a similarity that Berwick said he embraces.

Id be doing very well to emulate her, Berwick said. I think she and I are very much on the same page. I'm flattered by the comparison.

As he looks ahead to his own gubernatorial campaign, Berwick is eyeing Warrens successful Senate run as well as current governor Deval L. Patrick '78s two gubernatorial campaigns. He said he hopes to use many of the same campaign strategiesincluding a grassroots approach and an aggressive use of the internetthat helped propel those two politicians to victory.

But Robert J. Blendon, a professor at the School of Public Health and a longtime close colleague of Berwick, said that despite the similarities between Berwick and Warren, he expects Berwicks campaign to play out very differently than that of Warren. While Warren was able to draw from her past experience as a consumer advocate in Washington to run a Senate campaign focused often on national issues, Berwick faces an entirely different challenge with a gubernatorial campaignfamiliarizing himself with a broad range of state-level issues ranging in topic from the fishing industry to charter schools.

When you're a national figure and you come home to run for governor, you have to reach out to those groups of people that you may not have [previously] had the same involvement with, Blendon said. He is going to have to go from one of the worlds renowned people in health care to somebody who really can talk about the problems of day care in Massachusetts.

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Two Years After Warren, Medical School Lecturer To Run for Governor