Former WBZ reporter and now state Senate candidate Joe Shortsleeve has solved his Donald Trump problem.

Shortsleeve has said he voted for Trump in the presidential race. As a Democrat, he would have faced a huge obstacle in getting the party’s nomination for a Norfolk County-based legislative seat. Instead, he now plans to run right around the Democrats, straight to the general election.

Shortsleeve has informed the Office of Campaign and Political Finance that he is changing his designation from Democrat to independent — which means, after gathering enough signatures, the only race he will have is the general election. If he is elected, however, he says he will join the Senate Democratic caucus.

“I think I am the best general election candidate, but I am not the best Democratic primary candidate,’’ Shortsleeve said, in explaining his move. “That Democratic space is very narrow, and there’s not enough space for my moderate views.’’

Shortsleeve, of Medfield, also lamented what he called the “harsh partisan rhetoric’’ that has forced him to make an end-run around the party. “I am moderate, and I like to talk to people on both sides,’’ he said.

Shortsleeve, who says he voted for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary, has said he is now “deeply disappointed’’ in Trump and that his motive for backing the GOP nominee grew out of his belief that the Democrats, with whom he agrees on social issues, had no coherent economic message that spoke to a vast swath of the electorate — and that Trump did.

The seat that is up for grabs in a fall special election is being vacated by Senator James E. Timilty, a Walpole Democrat. Timilty is taking over the job of Norfolk County treasurer.

Frank Phillips

Jeb Bush’s return

Jeb! is back. Sort of.

Former Florida governor and 2016 presidential hopeful Jeb Bush will speak at Boston College on June 8 to an annual finance conference.

After keeping a relatively low profile following his fourth-place finish in the South Carolina primary, Bush has since reemerged.

Along with former Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, he has led a group angling to buy the Florida Marlins. He has weighed in on an immigrant driver’s license debate, spoken to hedge funders in Vegas, and chided his old rival Donald Trump to “stop saying things that aren’t true.’’

According to BC, Bush will take part in a dynamic daylong conversation focused on investment opportunities in the emerging, equity, energy, and real estate markets. And, one presumes, definitely not be “low energy.’’

Jim O’Sullivan

Another candidate for Jackson’s council seat

Kim Janey, a longtime education advocate, said she will make public education and the plight of people being displaced from their homes amid Boston’s building boom key issues in her bid to be the first woman elected to the City Council from District 7, which includes Roxbury, the South End, and parts of Dorchester.

At her campaign launch this week in Roxbury, Janey sounded a familiar theme — “We Are Stronger Together’’ — and made the case for why she would be the best person to take the seat being vacated by Councilor Tito Jackson, who is running for mayor.

“We are at a crossroads. All over our city we are seeking an economic boom,’’ Janey said. “But we are being left out of that prosperity.’’

Janey’s official entrance in the race came Tuesday, the last day for potential candidates to pull papers to run for elected office in Boston this year.

Sixty-six people have pulled papers, but only 22 had been verified by Boston’s Elections Commission by Wednesday evening to have their name on the ballot in the Sept. 26 primary election.

Other candidates still have time. The deadline for submitting signatures is Tuesday. The verification deadline is June 27.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh and Jackson, his main challenger, have both been confirmed and will be on the ballot. Seven other candidates pulled papers to compete in the race.

Here are the other verified candidates in the council’s three open races:

District 1: Lydia M. Edwards and Stephen Passacantilli will compete to replace Councilor Salvatore LaMattina, who is retiring. Five other candidates pulled papers; one dropped out.

District 2: Corey G. Dinopoulos, Edward M. Flynn, Joseph E. Kebartas, and Michael S.Kelley are on the ballot to replace the departing Councilor Bill Linehan. Four other people have pulled papers but have not yet been confirmed to appear on the ballot.

District 7: Janey, Rufus Faulk, Deeqo Jibril, Jose Lopez, Roy Owens, and Domonique A. Williams have been verified and will have their names on the September ballot. Nine other people have pulled papers to replace Jackson.

Meghan E. Irons

Teeth-gnashing galore

Remember a few months ago we told you about that battle raging between dentists and people on Beacon Hill who want to create a new type of advanced dental hygienist?

Both sides are still drilling. The Massachusetts Dental Society has conducted a poll it says shows widespread concern about this new type of mid-level hygienist, a sort of nurse practitioner of the dental world.

According to the dental society, the poll found that 73 percent of respondents do not feel comfortable allowing mid-level dental practitioners to perform irreversible procedures like drilling or pulling teeth without the supervision of a dentist.

But Senator Harriette Chandler, a Worcester Democrat who is sponsoring a bill in favor of these so-called dental therapists, said the new class of independently practicing hygienists would expand access to people in poor and rural communities.

She cast doubt on the quality of the polling. “I question the kind of questions that were asked and how they were asked,’’ Chandler said Thursday.

“We, too, have done polling, and it’s quite a different story,’’ she said. “We respectfully disagree.’’

The poll was conducted by MassINC Polling Group and surveyed 754 registered Massachusetts voters, according to the dental society.

The dental society is backing a separate bill that would also create a new class of dental therapists but place greater restrictions on them.

Laura Krantz

Wanted: State House security chief

Terrorist attacks around the world are rattling the folks who run the State House, so much so they have created a new position — director of security — and are on the verge of filling it.

Baker administration staff and aides to the Senate president and House speaker have winnowed down a list of 300 applicants and plan to make a final recommendation as early as this week from the remaining six.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, security at the State House — once a breezy, open building with scores of entrances and exits — has been handled by unarmed Department of Conservation and Recreation rangers and a small band of State Police officers. The 21 open doors have been whittled down to just two for the public.

But the international turbulence has prompted Governor Charlie Baker, Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg, and House Speaker Robert DeLeo to look into beefing up the security. It won’t be easy, considering the thousands of tourists, visitors, lobbyists, and politicians who access the building each year.

The security job is officially posted at a $41,000 to $109,000 salary range. But a Beacon Hill staffer insists the new position will pay $140,000 to $150,000.

Frank Phillips

Sit-in planned outside Baker’s office

A group of clergy and prisoners’ rights advocates is planning a sit-in outside Governor Charlie Baker’s office on Friday — the birthday of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X — in an effort to press the governor to investigate allegations of abuse in the state correction system and end practices such as solitary confinement, which the activists call “barbaric.’’

The activists plan to appeal to the governor to meet with them to hear their concerns, said Lynn Currier, who runs The Massachusetts 6+, whose members work with people who are incarcerated.

“We are pushing the governor for an investigation and he’s ignoring it,’’ said Currier. “So we are going back until he sits with us.’’

The group’s demands include ending what it says are unwarranted assignments of inmates to high-security facilities; forming a citizens oversight committee; and exonerating convicts whose cases were affected by a Western Massachusetts drug lab scandal.

Currier said the system is failing to offer appropriate rehabilitative services and targeted prisoner activists by transferring them to maximum-security facilities or placing them in isolation. She said the group has been trying to meet with the governor for a year, but not gotten a response.

The advocates pledged to return to the governor’s office every Friday to “remind him of his responsibility until he gives us a meeting.’’

Billy Pitman, the governor’s press secretary, said members of the administration have met and corresponded with the advocates and clergy members over their concerns.

He noted that the administration filed bipartisan reform legislation last month that will reduce the number of people incarcerated because of their inability to pay a fine.

The administration has also worked closely with legislative and judicial leaders on an independent analysis of the state’s criminal justice system, he said. The aim, Pitman added, was to bring about reforms “that will reduce recidivism and support the Commonwealth’s already declining prison population.’’

Meghan E. Irons

Democrats on board

Remember when New England Democrats didn’t especially like Republican Scott Brown? All is apparently forgotten. Maybe they’ve learned to love him. Or maybe they’ve learned to love the idea of President Trump sending him to the other end of the earth.

Brown, the former US senator from Massachusetts, went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a hearing on his nomination to be ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa this week. Among those singing his praises: US Senator Ed Markey, whose remarks were downright effusive.

“Senator Brown, you are a true son of New England — born in Maine, now living in New Hampshire, and during the decades in between serving the people of Massachusetts at every level of town government,’’ Markey said. “Your success in overcoming hardships early in life and then reaching the upper echelons of public service is an inspiration ... to the children of this nation.’’

And that’s not all. The office of New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen made public a photograph of Shaheen and Brown sharing smiles and a handshake. You’ll recall that Brown decamped to New Hampshire to run against Shaheen in her 2014 race for reelection. No talk of that this week.

“Today’s meeting was an opportunity to congratulate Senator Brown in person on his nomination, and discuss the job of US Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa,’’ Shaheen said.

Felice Belman