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Keller @ Large: Where's Setti Warren's Sense Of Responsibility?

BOSTON (CBS) - I spent some time yesterday talking with people on the streets of Newton about their ambitious young mayor, Setti Warren, who has announced that he is running for the U.S. Senate after serving less than a third of his four-year term.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

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I have known Warren since his days as the flak catcher for Senator John Kerry, and always found him a pleasure to work with. So I wasn't surprised to find that everyone I spoke with in the Garden City seems to like their new mayor, and are encouraged by the changes he's made during his first 16 months in office.

But that's also a big problem for the Warren campaign.

The majority of those I spoke with were not happy with his decision to embark on a costly, time-consuming statewide campaign over the next-year-and-a-half while ostensibly still handling his full-time job as mayor of Newton.

Watch Jon's WBZ-TV report

During his outsider campaign for mayor in 2010, Warren promised he wouldn't do exactly what he is now doing.

And in his Senate campaign video, he has the nerve to make several gushing references to the need for (and his alleged embodiment of) a "shared sense of responsibility to each other."

Very nice.

Does Deval Patrick get royalties from that?

But hey, Senator Warren...oops, I mean Mayor Warren -- where's your sense of responsibility to the people who elected you mayor?

Warren says he can do both jobs at the same time, which is true, he just can't do them properly, and that leaves Newton holding the bag.

We've been down this road before, friends, haven't we?

Dukakis, Weld, Cellucci, Kerry, Romney, all shorting one job to grab for another, or bailing out altogether on the job they claimed to really want.

Par for the course? Apparently.

Narcissistic and irrresponsible?

What do you think?

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.

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