Political insiders have been striking out in Massachusetts governor’s races for decades. In the years since Foster Furcolo parlayed a job as state treasurer into a stint in the corner office, back in the 1950s, statewide officeholders are a collective 0-for-17 in gubernatorial contests. Gubernatorial politics in Massachusetts has been stacked in favor of political outsiders, and against entrenched insiders, for a generation. But time is running out for the current crop of Democratic gubernatorial outsiders to keep the streak going.

WBUR’s David Scharfenberg asks today whether a political outsider can break through in this year’s race for governor. It’s a remarkable question, given the nearly six-decade-long dry spell that political insiders have suffered in Massachusetts. CommonWealth‘s Spring issue detailed the long losing streak that the state’s most deeply entrenched political insiders have suffered at the hands of outsider candidates. Recent gubernatorial contests are littered with the names of statewide officeholders — from Scott Harshbarger and Tom Reilly to Joe Malone and Kerry Healey — who were unsuccessful in making the leap to the governor’s office.

Robert Reich , the former Clinton aide who ran an insurgent gubernatorial campaign in 2002, told CommonWealth that state voters explicitly want a different type of candidate as their governor, one who can balance the network of insiders that dominates the rest of Massachusetts politics: “The very culture of insider politics that dominates so much of Massachusetts has caused voters to want something quite different in their governor.” Thus, Bay State voters maintain one of the least competitive state legislatures in the country, but line up behind gubernatorial candidates like John Silber, William Weld, Mitt Romney, and Deval Patrick.

Today’s WBUR piece suggests that the current crop of Democratic gubernatorial outsiders — Joe Avellone, Don Berwick, and Juliette Kayyem — are quickly running out of runway. They’re struggling to attract widespread public support; the party’s nominating convention, which is presents a major hurdle to a spot on September’s primary ballot, is less than two weeks away. A recent WBUR poll found Attorney General Martha Coakley with an enormous 44-point lead over state Treasurer Steve Grossman, with Avellone, Berwick and Kayyem all polling in the low single digits. “Time is running short,” Scharfenberg writes, “in the crucial first phase of the campaign.”

Avellone, Berwick, and Kayyem all hope to catch the lightning that Patrick rode past Reilly, and into the governor’s office, in 2006. But all three outsider candidates are well behind the pace Patrick set in 2006. At this time eight years ago, Patrick had already made his move and pulled into a horse race with Reilly; his statewide name recognition was polling above 90 percent. By contrast, Avellone, Berwick and Kayyem are all still known by only one-third of state voters. Patrick used the Democrats’ summer convention to blow past Reilly and cement his position as the candidate to beat in November. The three candidates hoping to follow in his footsteps are just hoping to survive and advance to September’s primary.

–PAUL MCMORROW  

BEACON HILL

A new state panel is investigating ways of dealing with erosion of the Massachusetts coastline, the Gloucester Times reports.

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

In a decision that will prove costly for retirees in Middleboro and elsewhere, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that selectmen, not Town Meeting members, have the authority to set health insurance premium shares paid by past and present employees.

Mayor Marty Walsh wants to exempt top hires in his new administration from residency rules requiring them to live in Boston.

Boston’s city services chief ordered emergency, secret repairs to City Hall Plaza days before a recent music festival. Mayor Walsh is angry he was never told the plaza was structurally unsafe and in danger of collapse.

Brockton Mayor William Carpenter is proposing to raise health inspection rates on landlords of troubled properties to pay for increased code enforcement aiming at buildings with high criminal activity.

Lenox has a problem with off-leash dogs.

NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON

The Seattle City Council approves a measure that will steadily raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Republicans continue to pile on, and not in a good way, after, President Obama secures the release of an American POW.

The Atlantic‘s Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that reparations for black Americans are necessary because American governments are “deeply implicated in enslavement, Jim Crow, redlining, New Deal racism, terrorism, ghettoization, housing segregation. The fact that one’s ancestors were not slave-traders or that one arrived here in 1980 is irrelevant… People who object to reparations for African-Americans because they, individually, did nothing … should object to the Fourth of July, since they, individually, did nothing to aid the American Revolution.”

ELECTIONS

Republican gubernatorial candidates Charlie Baker and Mark Fisher share the stage for the first time, agreeing on some issues while taking very different stances on health care and climate change, State House News reports. Fisher says he would be willing to drop his lawsuit against the state Republican Party if party officials released ballots from the state convention where officials initially ruled he did not qualify for the ballot, the Associated Press reports.

Scott Brown defends his stake in a penny-stock Florida company that has only a “virtual office” and has no current products, revenue, patents, trademarks, or manufacturing facilities.

Lowell is the second stop on US Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s “When Women Succeed, America Succeeds” bus tour, the Sun reports.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

Attorney General Martha Coakley is suing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, accusing the federal mortgage giants of refusing to negotiate to sell back foreclosed houses to their former owners at lower loan terms, as required by a state law passed in 2012.

The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast in Fall River is auctioning off a night’s stay on the anniversary of the infamous murder with the winning bidder getting a sleep-over in the bedroom where the accused hacker’s mother was found dead and a breakfast similar to what the family had the morning of the crime, minus the mutton broth.

EDUCATION

A new report released this morning at a forum convened at The Boston Foundation calls for radical decentralizing of Boston’s public schools, letting them operate more like autonomous charter schools as part of strategy to boost their accountability and performance.

The Old Rochester Regional district School Committee upheld its decision to hold classes on Good Friday despite a petition signed by more than 700 parents in the district to close the schools for the religious observance.

HEALTH CARE

A high school student in Lowell tests positive for tuberculosis, NECN reports.

TRANSPORTATION

Investigators located the flight data recorder for the Gulfstream IV jet that crashed at Hanscom Field on Saturday, killing all seven aboard.

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

Massachusetts is already ahead of carbon emissions goals set by the EPA, State House News reports. A Wall Street Journal analysis shows that the new emissions limits won’t be the knockout blow that the coal industry had feared.

The Quincy City Council reluctantly adopted the new federal flood zone map that adds 1,400 homes in the city to the plain and raises premiums for another 2,700 homes and businesses already in the flood zone.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Prosecutors at the trial of former Probation commissioner John O’Brien drop two of their 10 mail fraud charges, CommonWealth reports.

A New Bedford man was charged with hacking into computers at Bristol Community College and changing grades for him and two other students.

MEDIA

As many as 28 employeesare cut by the new owners of the Telegram & Gazette, according to the GoLocalWorcester website.

The US Supreme Court declines to intervene in a case where a reporter for the New York Times was subpoenaed and asked to reveal a confidential source, the Washington Post reports.

Movie crews transform a Lynn parking lot into the murder scene of Brian Halloran, one of Whitey Bulger’s victims, the Item reports.