Maura Healey
Maura Tracy Healey is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 73rd governor of Massachusetts since 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as Massachusetts Attorney General from 2015 to 2023 and was elected governor in 2022.
Hired by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley in 2007, Healey served as chief of the Civil Rights Division, where she led the state's challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. She was then appointed chief of the Public Protection and Advocacy Bureau and then chief of the Business and Labor Bureau, before resigning in 2013 to run for attorney general in 2014. She defeated former State Senator Warren Tolman in the Democratic primary and Republican attorney John Miller in the general election. Healey was reelected in 2018. She was elected governor of Massachusetts in 2022.
In 2014, Healey became the first openly lesbian woman elected attorney general of a U.S. state and the first openly LGBTQ person elected to statewide office in Massachusetts. In 2022, she became one of the first two openly lesbian women and the joint-third openly LGBT person elected governor of a U.S. state, as well as the first woman elected governor of Massachusetts.
Early life and education
Healey was born on February 8, 1971, at Walter Reed Hospital, in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington D.C. When she was nine months old, her family moved to Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, where she was raised. Healey is the oldest of her five brothers and sisters. Her mother was a nurse at Lincoln Akerman School in Hampton Falls; her father was a captain in the United States Public Health Service and an engineer. After divorcing, her mother sold her wedding ring to pay for a backyard basketball court. Healey's stepfather, Edward Beattie, taught history and coached girls' sports at Winnacunnet High School. Several of her grandparents and great-grandparents were born in Ireland.Healey attended Winnacunnet High School, and majored in government at Harvard College, graduating cum laude in 1992. She was co-captain of the Harvard Crimson women's basketball team. After graduation, Healey spent two years playing as a starting point guard for a professional basketball team in Austria, UBBC Wüstenrot Salzburg, now called BBU Salzburg. Upon returning to the United States, she earned a Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law in 1998.
Career
Healey began her legal career by clerking for Judge A. David Mazzone of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, where she prepared monthly compliance reports on the cleanup of the Boston Harbor and assisted the judge with trials, hearings, and case conferences. Healey subsequently spent more than seven years at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where she worked as an associate and then junior partner and focused on commercial and securities litigation.She also served as a special assistant district attorney in Middlesex County, where she tried drug, assault, domestic violence, and motor vehicle cases in bench and jury sessions and argued bail hearings, motions to suppress, and probation violations and surrenders.
File:Doma-decision-press-conference 4787096744 o.jpg|thumb|Healey and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley at a July 8, 2010, press conference on the Massachusetts v. U.S. Dep't of Health & Human Servs. lawsuit challenging the Defense of Marriage Act
Hired by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley in 2007, Healey served as chief of the Civil Rights Division, where she spearheaded the state's challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. She led the winning arguments for Massachusetts in the country's first lawsuit striking down the law.
In 2012, Healey was promoted to chief of the Public Protection and Advocacy Bureau. She was then appointed chief of the Business and Labor Bureau.
As a division chief and bureau head in the Attorney General's Office, Healey oversaw 250 lawyers and staff members and supervised the areas of consumer protection, fair labor, ratepayer advocacy, environmental protection, health care, insurance and financial services, civil rights, antitrust, Medicaid fraud, nonprofit organizations and charities, and business, technology, and economic development.
Attorney General of Massachusetts (2015–2023)
Elections
2014
In October 2013, Healey announced her candidacy for attorney general. Coakley was retiring from the office to run for governor. On September 9, 2014, Healey won the Democratic primary by 126,420 votes, defeating former State Senator Warren Tolman, 62.4% to 37.6%.Healey's campaign was endorsed by State Senators Stan Rosenberg, Dan Wolf, and Jamie Eldridge. It was also endorsed by Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan, Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, Fitchburg Mayor Lisa Wong, and Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz. Organizations that endorsed the campaign include the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts, MassEquality, the Victory Fund, and EMILY's List. Healey wrote an op-ed in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette on upholding the Massachusetts buffer zone law, which she worked on at the Attorney General's Office. She also authored an op-ed in The Boston Globe outlining her plan to combat student loan predators.
Healey defeated Republican nominee John Miller, an attorney, in the general election, 62.5% to 37.5%. Upon taking office, she became the United States' first openly lesbian state attorney general.
2018
On November 6, 2018, Healey was reelected Massachusetts Attorney General, defeating Republican nominee James McMahon with 69.9% of the vote.Tenure
Healey's plan to reduce gun violence addresses what she perceives as its root causes. The program includes enhancing the background check system to include information regarding recent restraining orders, pending indictments, and any relations to domestic violence, parole, and probation information. The plan also seeks to track better stolen and missing guns. Healey advocates fingerprint trigger locks and firearm micro-stamping on all guns sold in Massachusetts.Healey's plan for criminal justice reform includes ending mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and focusing on treatment rather than incarceration.
Healey plans to combat prescription drug abuse and Massachusetts's heroin epidemic by implementing a "lock-in" program. The program will be carried out in pharmacies to identify and track prescription drug abusers and distributors. Her plan includes deployment of new resources to drug trafficking hotspots, improvement of treatment accessibility, and expanding access to Narcan.
Abortion
Healey's women's rights platform focuses on sex education, expanding access to abortion services in Massachusetts, and ensuring that every woman in Massachusetts has access to abortion, regardless of where she lives, her occupation, or her income.Gun control
On July 20, 2016, Healey announced her intention to ban the manufacturing of most assault rifles in Massachusetts. In 2021, as a result of this and other "arbitrary and damaging legislation", Smith & Wesson announced plans to relocate its headquarters and much of its manufacturing from Massachusetts to Tennessee. The new factory opened in Maryville in 2023.Trump administration
On January 31, 2017, Healey announced that her office was joining a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump's Executive Order 13769, commonly known as a "Muslim ban." Healey condemned the order as "motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment and Islamophobia, not by a desire to further national security." A federal court eventually struck the order down on similar grounds.On March 9, 2017, Healey announced that her office was joining a lawsuit challenging Trump's Executive Order 13780. She said the new order, a revised version of the one that had been struck down, "remains a discriminatory and unconstitutional attempt to make good on campaign promise to implement a Muslim ban." The order has been blocked in various federal courts on similar grounds.
On May 11, 2017, after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, Healey led efforts calling for a special counsel to investigate Russia's meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Her office sent a letter to that effect, signed by 20 Attorneys General across the nation, to Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. On May 17, Rosenstein appointed a special counsel, former FBI director Robert Mueller.
Purdue Pharma
In 2021, Healey announced a resolution against the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma. The resolution requires a payment of more than $4.3 billion for prevention, treatment, and recovery efforts in communities across the country. It will also require Purdue Pharma to be wound down or sold by 2024 and ensure that the Sacklers are banned from the opioid business and are required to turn over control of family foundations to an independent trustee to be used to address the opioid epidemic.Governor of Massachusetts (2023–present)
Elections
2022
On January 20, 2022, Healey announced her candidacy in the 2022 Massachusetts gubernatorial election. Her announcement came after the incumbent governor, Charlie Baker, a Republican, announced he would not seek reelection. On September 6, Healey won the Democratic primary election. She defeated Sonia Chang-Díaz, who withdrew from the primary. Healey was endorsed by Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey.On November 8, 2022, Healey defeated Republican nominee Geoff Diehl, receiving 64% of the vote in the general election to Diehl's 35%. This made her the first woman elected governor of Massachusetts and one of the first two openly lesbian governors in the U.S., along with Tina Kotek of Oregon, who was also elected in 2022. She was inaugurated on January 5, 2023.