As a competitive Democratic primary heats up in the race to succeed Suzanne Bump as the next Commonwealth State Auditor, candidate Antoine Amore awaits the challenger as presumably the only Republican in the contest – and he started his run with big approval in the tote. Incumbent Governor Charlie Baker bestowed his first endorsement of the 2022 election season on Amore in his bid for the auditor position.

“I just believe he approved of me because he knows we’re of the same mind in a lot of ways,” Amore said when he joined me on air recently. “We are both very focused on good government. We both believe that government should be run efficiently and with integrity, and there really is no better office to underscore that than the Auditor. The Governor acknowledges that the auditor’s office is much more important than people realize, and he knows that I have the experience not only to do this kind of work, but also to lead a large organization.”

Amore stands out from other candidates in the race with her decades of auditing and investigative work. For 15 years, Amore worked as a federal security agent for the FAA and the Department of Homeland Security. After 9/11, Amore was selected for the position of Deputy Director of Federal Security and tasked with leading efforts to rebuild security infrastructure at Logan Airport.

In 2005, Amore became director of security and chief investigator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, a crown jewel of Boston’s artistic and cultural profile that displays a multi-billion dollar art collection. Amore also led an investigation into the 1990 heist at the museum which remains the biggest robbery in world history.

Amid the ongoing debate over college affordability and UMass’s announced 2.5% tuition hike, Amore wants to use the power of the auditor’s office to audit the public education system in order to determine the true cost of college and find out what is driving up tuition.

“I think the listener can come in and look at the books and see, is Umass spending his money?” says Love. “Do all state colleges and universities use taxpayer funds effectively and efficiently? These are a few trivia, but they are important trivia. It is well known that if you want to build a dorm at UMass Boston , it will cost a lot more than it will be 10 miles down the road at Salem State. I don’t understand why that is. Why should that be? And I think the checker is in a perfect position to examine this.

With legislation underway in Beacon Hill to allow undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses, Amore believes the RMV is woefully ill-equipped to handle the new influx of license applicants. He is also concerned about how the RMV would determine how claims would qualify under this proposed law. Amore believes it will be up to the next auditor to step in and ensure that foreign documents submitted for these licenses go through a thorough and effective authentication process.

“They never know what’s in store for them every day,” Amore said of RMV employees. “They deal with people from all over the world, they face language barriers. They face language barriers and they often apply these complicated rules. Now you’re going to say with all the chaos you can find at an RMV, you’re going to ask these people behind the counter to suddenly become experts in examining ID documents from a few hundred different nations How could you add that burden to their jobs and how could you expect it to go well?”

Amore also said the Office of the Auditor General is not fulfilling its statutory mandate to audit all 210 state agencies every three years. If elected, he will conduct an independent audit of the Office of the Auditor to determine the factors that prevent the Office of the Auditor from fulfilling its statutory burden.

We also discussed the history of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and whether or not he thinks the auditor has statutory authority to audit the state legislature.

You can listen to the full interview at 8:00 p.m. here: