At least Gina Fiandaca did not embarrass the governor, let alone hold the state up to ridicule.

She was no Monica Tibbits-Nutt, not by a long shot.

Fiandaca, you may recall, was Gov. Maura Healey’s first pick to be Secretary of Transportation.

The onetime commissioner of Boston’s Transportation Department under Mayor Marty Walsh spent eight months on the job before stepping down.

She either decided to leave the position on her own (her version) or was let go following an internal power struggle with Tom Glynn, the chairman of the MBTA Board of Directors and a Healey advisor (insider version).

Either way, Fiandaca, being the political pro that she is, left without whining or doing any damage to Healey’s political standing.

Healey, to her current chagrin, replaced Fiandaca with Monica Tibbits-Nutt, her undersecretary, who in eight minutes caused Healey more problems than Fiandaca did in eight months.

But Tibbits-Nutt has not been fired, at least not yet. Perhaps being a progressive with a hyphen helps.

Still, Healey put some distance between herself and Tibbitts-Nutt following Nutt’s outlandish remarks before the transportation study group Walk Massachusetts, which she chairs.

Her remarks included the setting up tolls along the border with New Hampshire, raising payroll taxes, increasing the excise tax, higher charges for package delivery, new fees for Uber and Lyft rides, and a derisive attack on people who drive SUVs and the popular Ford -F-150 pickup truck.

It was bad enough that Tibbits-Nutt said what she said. It was only made worse by her derisive tone and the manner in which she said it.

When she talked about establishing tolls along the New Hampshire border or raising taxes, she said she was “basically going after everyone who has money.”

She said, “We are going after all the people who should be giving us money to make our transportation better.”

At her height of arrogance, or ignorance, Tibbits-Nutt said of the power she wields as secretary, “I will one hundred per cent use that as a weapon because once I say it, it is now a policy.”

That is something Fiandaca would never have said.

It was even too much for Healey, who commented, “I’ve already spoken to the secretary about that. That was a very poor choice of words. That’s not how we do things. That’s not how we operate.”

Tibbits-Nutt is simply one of the new waves of progressive Democrats with authoritarian attitudes who have flooded Beacon Hill in recent years. Gov. Healey has appointed a number of them.

New to power, they seem to confuse governing with ruling.  And their language, like Tibbit-Nutt’s, is intense and threatening. It is their way, or the highway.

Take Milton’s opposition to the mandate that it must build multifamily housing under the state’s MBTA Communities Law. Milton is being sued over the issue by woke Attorney General Andrea Campbell.

Sen. Lydia Edwards, a progressive from East Boston, and chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Housing, said “The state has to crush Milton.” She added, “You don’t get to choose what laws you will follow.”

Following a furor, Edwards issued an apology.

Campbell, who filed the suit against Milton for challenging the law, called Milton an “outlier” for insisting on local control over a state mandate.

“The state trumps,” Campbell said. “And it’s as simple as that.”

If everything were as “simple” as that, Healey and Campbell would be doing something about the disgraceful and lawless outbreak of antisemitism at Harvard and at other colleges in the state.

Perhaps all the left-wing, pro-Hamas, chanting college antisemites who want to kill Jews and make Gaza great are too dumb to warrant their attention, which is understandable.

After all, half of the college demonstrators could not find Gaza on a map while the other half think it’s a gas station in Jerusalem.

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com

Former MassDOT Secretary Gina Fiandaca (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald/File)