Anonymity, round two

But one guy is staying put: Tim Murray, our lieutenant governor.

In case anybody had any doubt, Murray issued a statement a few weeks ago telling his supporters he would not be running for the US Senate seat left vacant by Ted Kennedy’s death. Some ungenerous souls point out that Murray wasn’t actually on a lot of short lists in the first place. And earlier this year, Murray put the kibosh on speculation - fueled by his frenetic fund-raising and electoral temperature-taking - that he would be running for attorney general or some other office.

No. Despite the fact that others are leaving Governor Deval Patrick’s administration like rodents jumping, or being pushed, off a sinking proverbial, Murray says he is happy where he is and committed to continuing the work he and Patrick began.

“Absolutely, I am running for reelection, and I’m looking forward to the campaign,’’ he says.

Besides, a lot of people have no idea who Murray is. Almost half the respondents in a July Globe poll said they had never heard of the lieutenant governor (though 63 percent of those who know him viewed him favorably). Murray’s own polling in February told him the same thing. “I know I’m not a household name,’’ he says with a chuckle.

That’s how it usually goes with our state’s second fiddles. They show up where the governor can’t, leading unglamorous working groups, presiding over those somnolent Governor’s Council meetings on Wednesdays. They all want to be governor one day, and Murray admits he is no exception. But their fortunes are directly tied to their number ones. That’s good if your governor is insanely popular. Patrick isn’t.

Despite all this, the boyish-looking former Worcester mayor takes immense pride in his work on homelessness, veterans’ issues, and transportation: Just last week, he helped finalize a deal with railroad company CSX that will bump up rail service between Worcester and Boston and advance an eternally anticipated rail line to the South Coast.

He is settling into the role of administration pit bull, laying into gubernatorial hopeful Tim Cahill and Republicans on Patrick’s behalf. He’s the guy who delivers bad news about budget cuts to mayors and fields their gripes and requests.

Murray is the governor’s unlikeliest possible partner: an old-school, Claddagh-ring-wearing pol who gets back-scratching and payback in a way Patrick never will, or would want to. The lieutenant governor remembers his friends, and his enemies: He may have left the mayor’s job in 2007, but he still keeps a hand in Worcester politics. He is currently devoting considerable energy to unseating his old nemesis, Mayor Konnie Lukes.

So how does this affable, bare-knuckled 41-year-old respond to Patrick’s political miscalculations, from the decision to outfit his office with ridiculously expensive curtains to his appointment of a state senator to a plum post for which she had virtually no qualifications?

He doesn’t. You know Murray has got to be driven crazy by this stuff. But he keeps a lid on it publicly. The only frustration he will cop to is over the fact that a lot of the Patrick administration’s achievements have been obscured by the economic downturn.

“Sometimes the politics was tougher than it needed to be, but things got done,’’ Murray said in an interview at his campaign headquarters, where a portrait of his two daughters, adopted from Guatemala, hang on a wall. “There’s not a manual out there for how to be governor in the greatest downturn since the Depression.’’

Murray is hoping the economy recovers in time for next year’s election. His own future depends on it.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.