Republican Ted Gatsas, Manchester mayor and a former state senate president, arrived at the statehouse completed paperwork to run for governor in hand.
"Don't worry, we come prepared. I know what it is up here. I've done it a few times."
The same goes for former Congresswoman, Carol Shea-Porter. The Rochester democrat formalized her sixth campaign to represent the first district. Much, she says, remains the same.
"We are really focused on exactly what we were focused on before, making life better for what I've always called the rest of us, the bottom 99 percent."
Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern, meanwhile, running for governor as a democrat, told reporters where he stands on taxes -- opposed to general sales and income taxes, but open to other options.
"We could fund full day kindergarten in every community in our state if we reversed the cut in cigarette taxes that we made four or five years ago -- I think it was a dime a pack. Well, that, to me, sounds like a good deal."
But a deal no longer available. The tobacco tax cut Van Ostern mentioned was already reversed, three years ago.
