In Brief:
- Healey has emphasized practical economic issues like addressing high cost of living, repairing the beleaguered public transportation system, boosting affordable housing and cutting taxes. Many of her gubernatorial challengers are also highlighting affordability.
- Healey’s first term also saw her declare a state of emergency over soaring demand of the state’s emergency shelter system.
- The governor has presented herself as a pragmatic political leader — a trait that could go far in a state where getting along with the powerful legislature is essential for gubernatorial success.
Maura Healey became the first openly lesbian governor in the U.S. in 2023 and shattered several glass ceilings in Massachusetts as well. She’s the Bay State’s first elected female governor, and she comes to the role after serving as state attorney general, making her the first person in 50 years to successfully make that transition.
Healey is a Democratic governor of a deep-blue state, but she eschewed sweeping progressive changes in favor of building a reputation as a pragmatic politician focused on bread-and-butter issues. The governor spent much of her first term attending to challenges around housing, public transportation and cost of living, and she hopes that reputation will carry her into a second term.
“When [Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll] and I started, we laid out in our inaugural address things that we wanted to do. We wanted to get after housing, and we wanted to get after transportation, we wanted to cut taxes, we wanted to make investments in education,” Healey said in the announcement of her re-election campaign. “We’ve done all those things, and there’s a heck of a lot more to do.”…