Bay State Attorney General Maura Healey won the Democratic primary election in Massachusetts yesterday to become her party’s candidate.
If elected governor, Healey would become one of just three openly LGBTQ elected governors in the United States, along with Jared Polis of Colorado and Oregon’s Kate Brown, who is bisexual. (In Oregon, Democratic candidate Tina Kotek, a lesbian, is on the ballot to replace Brown as that state’s next governor.)
“As your next governor, I promise you I will lead with my head and with my heart,” Healey told supporters yesterday, as reported by the Boston Globe. “The choice in this election couldn’t be more clear,” she said. “It’s a choice between partisanship and progress; between dividing people and delivering for people.”
On Nov. 8, she will face the Trump-backed Republican Geoff Diehl in the general election. Diehl, said Trump at a recent “television” rally aimed at Massachusetts voters, would “rule your state with an iron fist.”
Reports the Globe:
The results, projected by the Associated Press Tuesday night, cement the general election race to succeed Governor Charlie Baker, the state’s second-term Republican who is not seeking reelection.
The matchup will top a ballot of potentially history-making races. Healey’s endorsed successor, Andrea Campbell, emerged victorious in a primary for attorney general to become the first Black woman ever to win a Democratic nomination for a statewide office.
Healey will run with Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll, who emerged from a three-way primary for lieutenant governor. If elected, they would be the first all-female executive team to ever sit in the corner office.
Diehl, a former state lawmaker and past US Senate nominee, won the Republican nomination over Chris Doughty, a first-time, largely self-funded candidate, after promising a conservative vision that hews far closer to that of Trump and the national GOP than Baker, the state party’s longtime moderate standard-bearer.
Tuesday’s results were expected to bring to an end a strange — and in some ways, unpredictable — primary season in Massachusetts, where turnover is ensured for many of the state’s highest elected offices. That includes the corner office, where Healey enters the nine-week sprint to the Nov. 8 election as a clear front-runner.
Read the complete Boston Globe article here.
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