- Ted, welcome back.

It's good to have you.

US Commerce Secretary and former Rhode Island Governor, Gina Raimondo was recently in the national spotlight.

She was featured in what was a relatively positive piece on "60 Minutes."

You've been covering her for years.

I would imagine that Raimondo and her team were very happy to have that kind of publicity.

- They were very happy.

I spoke with some of her aides after the piece aired.

And people have to remember, "60 Minutes" is still the highest rated news program on American television.

So having that kind of spotlight for Raimondo, it's only going to raise her profile and her prominence even further in Washington.

And I do think, Lesley Stahl, who did the piece on Raimondo, made a good point in there that Commerce Secretary has not historically been, you know, a top-tier cabinet post that got that level of attention, which does speak to Raimondo's ability to sort of turn it into something more than it had been in the past.

- Yeah, and the "60 Minutes" report talked about the work that Raimondo and the Commerce Department are doing to bring advanced chip manufacturing to the United States.

Right now, about 90% of that work is being done in Taiwan.

And Raimondo says, look, this is a national security concern.

We cannot continue down this road.

The piece also talked about the work that Raimondo is doing.

It's called an "Internet for All" program, which involves expanding high-speed internet mostly to rural America.

I was surprised that about 24 million Americans still do not have access to high-speed internet.

And then, you know, Lesley Stahl asked the question that we were all wondering, right, which is Raimondo, what are your political ambitions?

Let's take a listen to that exchange.

- So here comes the inevitable obvious question that you know is coming your way.

You are on a list of future presidential candidates.

Does that sound good to you?

Is it appetizing?

- What sounds good to me is being the best Commerce Secretary there's ever been.

- Ted, I mean, that's the kind of non-answer that people expect to hear from politicians.

- Yes, and it's not, Michelle, the first time I've heard Raimondo give that kind of answer.

I was in Washington to interview her last year for a similar profile about her new life in Washington.

And I pressed her, are you interested in this?

Do you like this buzz?

And she sort of gave me an in-between answer.

I said, that's not a no.

She said, well, it's not a yes either, so she likes this speculation.

- So let me pose the same question to you.

You've been covering her as long as she's been in public office.

Do you think that Gina Raimondo will someday run for President?

- I'm skeptical.

And that's not to take anything away from Raimondo.

She achieved a great deal.

I mean, to go from Rhode Island Governor into the cabinet is pretty rare.

She certainly had success there.

She has a lot of elite fans in Washington, people who think highly of her.

But running for president is, there's nothing like it.

And she doesn't have a strong political base geographically out in the country.

She's got problems with the left, which doesn't trust her 'cause of her sort of business mindedness and some of the policies she advocated in Rhode Island.

And there's just many, many other Democrats who also want to run.

Vice President Harris, the governor of California, the governor of Michigan.

So I think in the end, it's not something she's gonna do, but I also don't think she's gonna rule it out until she has to.

- But even if she doesn't run, she's only 52 years old, she's still young.

Obviously, she's not about to retire.

And people have said, look, if Biden does get reelected, he could appoint her as US Treasury Secretary.

- And that, I think, is much more plausible.

I'm sure she'll be looked at for that post whenever Secretary Janet Yellen moves on.

And I could see her getting it.

I also think further down the line, you know, maybe she'd look at something out of politics.

Being a university president.

Maybe going into the corporate sector in some kind of executive or board type of role.

I think we're gonna be seeing her on the public stage for a long time.

- And also, let's keep in mind, like, her record here in Rhode Island, people are still very critical of the work that she did here.

Let's go back to 2011 when she engineered this massive pension overhaul.

Frankly, many retired state employees have not forgiven her for allowing lawmakers to freeze the cost of living adjustments in order to shrink the multi-billion dollar shortfall in the pension fund.

I mean, people still hold a grudge over that.

- And it's understandably so.

And I also think this has gotten even harder for retirees in recent years because of the high inflation that we've seen, which is eating into their, the value of their benefits even more than it was prior to the run-up in inflation, which I think is part of why it's coming up so much right now.

- And the General Treasurer, James Diossa, is revisiting that to see, look, will we have another pension overhaul?

But right now, the General Assembly ultimately has not decided what they will do.

- Yeah, and I don't know where that's gonna go.

I do think there's a lot more interest across the General Assembly in doing something they often say for the retirees.

What that will be is unclear to me.

And again, we've talked about this on the segment before, Michelle.

Money is tighter this year on Smith Hill as they finish rating the state budget for next year.

And Speaker Shekarchi often says there's a billion dollars in different asks.

So I don't know whether retirees will sort of be one of the ones that makes it into the final product, or if they're gonna be told they have to wait.

- Right, and compete with the Washington Bridge cost.

- Another big cost that's coming and that is still unknown.

- Absolutely.

Thanks so much for being here, Ted.

- Good to be here.