Stephen J. Murphy, it seems, was playing the long game. And now it appears likely that the vanquished Boston city councilor will enjoy a 62 percent boost in his taxpayer-funded salary.

But it gets better: Murphy’s potential $55,000 pay hike has the potential to dramatically increase his pension, making his two decades on the City Council so much more lucrative.

Here is how we got here: Murphy, in his time on the City Council, pushed hard for a raise because his pay had stalled at $87,500. In 2014, the City Council put up a number: a 29 percent hike that would increase councilors’ pay to $112,500.

After a fierce public backlash and a mayoral veto, the council backpedaled. Councilors settled on a more modest raise to $99,500. But Murphy missed out.

During the back and forth over the pay raise, the Globe dug into councilors’ work habits. Murphy attended fewer than one-quarter of City Council hearings and had been absent from Government Center for weeks at a time the previous last two winters. (He owns a condominium in Florida.)

Murphy lost his bid for reelection and left office before his hard-fought raise took effect. But he quickly found a new vocation.

Seats in Suffolk County government have long served as a sort of pension enhancement program for former Boston city councilors. The pay is significantly higher than at City Hall. Scrutiny is almost nonexistent. Think of the Register of Probate Felix D. Arroyo (five years on the council), or Criminal Court Clerk Maura A. Hennigan (24 years on the council) — both of whom will also get a raise.

A few days after Murphy left office in January 2016, longtime Register of Deeds Francis “Mickey’’ Roache resigned. (Roache served six years on the City Council.)

Murphy ran for the seat and won. He was took office in December and began collecting a salary of $124,000. Then Murphy’s luck got even better.

Legislative leaders are in the process of rushing through hefty raises for themselves that will hike their pay 40 percent. The Globe’s Frank Phillips reported this week that because of an obscure law, the legislation would increase pay for the Suffolk register of deeds by nearly $20,000.

Murphy did not return a call seeking comment. But after month in the job, he could see his pay soar to $142,000. Who needs that measly City Council raise?

Andrew Ryan

Hughes’s win was critical to Baker

Governor Charlie Baker dodged a big bullet — the potential loss of control of the state Republican Party — when Kirsten Hughes pulled off a strong win in her reelection as state GOP chairwoman.

At a meeting of the GOP state committee Wednesday, Hughes won a decisive 46-to-30 victory, allowing Baker’s political team to hold the reins of the party’s Boston headquarters, which is essentially the governor’s campaign committee office.

While the margin was bigger than expected, the Baker folks were nervous going into the meeting. Hughes had commitments for a razor-thin majority. But the fact that it was a secret ballot was no assurance of victory, given that a good part of the Trump wing of the party was none too happy over Baker’s snub of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race, and the Tea Party conservatives are still seething over his purging their committee members a year ago.

Those forces were rallying behind committeeman Steve Aylward, a fiscal and social conservative. He was one of a slew of incumbent committee members the Baker political team tried to oust in the March election for the state committee. He won handily.

While it was unprecedented for a governor, Baker’s decision to field candidates in that party committee election was critical to keeping the party under his control. He took a hit for spending more than $300,000 from undisclosed donors, but in the long run it worked.

With the party under his control, Baker is able to use its staff and office to raise huge federally regulated donations — far above the state’s $1,000-a-year limit. Because of a controversial ruling by state campaign finance regulators allowing his political committee to circumvent state law banning those funds for state political activities, the money can be used to support much of his political operations.

A Hughes defeat, said one Baker supporter on the committee, “would have been disastrous for the governor.’’

Frank Phillips

Battle for Democratic Party post underway

With the national Democratic Party embroiled in a close battle for a new chair, the contest here to pick the next Democratic national committeeman is taking on all the more importance — and reigniting some old fault lines from last year’s heated presidential primaries.

With the fight fairly wide open, the state committee is meeting Feb. 2 to chose from a list of hopefuls to fill the seat that Gus Bickford vacated when he took over as state party chairman late last year.

Among the candidates: Bob Colt, a committee member from Winchester for more than 20 years; Santiago Narino, president of the College Democrats of Massachusetts and a committee member from Roxbury; Mel Poindexter, a committee member from Watertown; Russ Ashton, a committee member from Wayland, elected in 1998; and Ed Collins, a committee member from Springfield for more than 20 years.

The intra-party squabble is inflamed by last year’s Hillary Clinton/Bernie Sanders donnybrook for the presidential nomination.

According to party sources, Clinton’s backer are still feeling the “Bern’’ — frustrated that Sanders’ attacks on Clinton in the primary election contributed to her loss in November.

The Sanders folks are convinced that Clinton blew it and — had he won the nomination — he would have beaten Donald Trump.

Frank Phillips

Amid bipartisan cheer, contentious issues on Beacon Hill agenda

“There’s no Democrat or Republican,’’ Somerset Democratic state Representative Patricia Haddad told the State House News Service after Governor Charlie Baker’s State of the Commonwealth address Tuesday night, a startling erasure of the two-party system and a clear sign of zeal among House leadership for the post-partisan, era-of-good-feelings utopia the governor had portrayed in his speech.

More than a few Democrats’ ears perked up, though, not just at what was in the speech, but also what wasn’t. Namely, a number of contentious items likely to dominate at least the early agenda of the two-year legislative cycle.

Baker made no mention, for instance, of his newly proposed penalties on employers who don’t provide health insurance to their employees — business groups call it a tax.

Similarly absent was discussion of the unprecedented pay hike that legislative leaders are pushing through for themselves — perhaps in response to a little-noticed public outcry that Beacon Hill is not suitably compensated by taxpayer dollars.

Several lawmakers said they had hoped to hear more about the governor’s plans for criminal justice reform. And there was no rhetorical bandwidth devoted to the state’s newest industry: commercialized marijuana.

For all the bipartisan — post-partisan, really — bonhomie, some lawmakers were left wondering if there might be a little more back and forth down the road.

“I’m looking forward to seeing a little more detail as to what the agenda going forward might be on his part,’’ said Chicopee Democratic state Representative Joseph Wagner, a House member since 1991.

Jim O’Sullivan

Moulton’s leadership roles

WASHINGTON — Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton hasn’t forged a particularly close relationship with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, including supporting her opponent, Tim Ryan, in an intra-party fight late last year. But he’s found a way to add “leadership’’ to his congressional resume, with a trio of new positions.

They include a new job as senior whip to Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip. In an interview, Moulton described the post as essentially being part of “a think tank’’ for the No. 2 House Democrat and a place to begin plotting next steps for the Democratic Party, which is shut out of power in Washington.

He’ll also be the vice chairman for millennial outreach for the Future Forum, a group that came out of an effort launched by Pelosi to engage more young people in the party. “I’m right on the edge of being a millennial,’’ said the 38-year-old lawmaker. Moulton hopes to focus on reducing student loan debt and noted that he’s still paying down his own education bills.

And he’ll be vice chairman of the Bipartisan Working Group, an informal committee that includes Republican and Democratic members looking for initiatives that cross party lines.

Annie Linskey