October 9, 2026
AS THE TWO Massachusetts gubernatorial candidates sparred in their first debate Thursday, GOP mega-donor and former Abiomed executive Mike Minogue tried to make the back-and-forth a referendum on the Bay State’s top executive during a cost-of-living crisis.
Gov. Maura Healey had a simpler plan: tie both her Republican challenger and the economic pain residents are feeling to President Donald Trump, a politically toxic figure to most Massachusetts voters.
“People can’t afford gas. They can’t afford rent. They can’t afford food. They can’t afford clothes,” Healey shot at Minogue during the debate hosted by WBZ-TV. “And this is all because of, in so many ways, Donald Trump — your guy — his failure to manage the economy.”
Minogue, taking swings at the state’s slow rate of permitting new housing and its expensive health care, never once said the president’s name.
“You keep blaming somebody in DC, and we know who it is,” he said. “I am Mike Minogue. I am a father. I am a husband. I am a combat veteran. I am a person who ran a business. I’m in the communities for nonprofits.” He said Healey was “name-calling me.”
“You know what I have? I have a plan to lower costs and grow jobs,” Minogue said.
Massachusetts’s politics are rarely friendly to Republicans seeking statewide office, with the notable exception being the corner office. Voters in the deep-blue state are sometimes open to a gesture toward bipartisanship through a Republican governor that could, at least in theory, square off against a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature.
But Minogue’s odds look long. In late September, just 32 percent of voters said they would back Minogue, trailing Healey at 54 percent in a CommonWealth Beacon/MassINC Polling Group survey. To many, even Republicans, Minogue was still a relatively unknown quantity. About 28 percent of Republicans and Democrats said they were undecided on how they felt about Minogue.
They are not uncertain about the leader of his party. Trump’s favorability among Bay State Republicans and those who lean Republican is strong — just over 70 percent. But for the rest of the state, the president is deep underwater, with just 4 percent of those leaning Democratic and 12 percent of independents reporting favorable views.
Healey hammered the connection. Minogue, she pointed out repeatedly, donated $1 million toward Trump and other Republican causes in 2024.
When Minogue took aim at the cost of housing, pledging to ease permitting and back away from enforcing the MBTA Communities housing law through the courts, Healey pointed to persistently high inflation and tariffs on construction materials because of the White House.
Minogue said he would opt into a federal scholarship tax credit that he said could bring in $1.7 billion in grants. Healey countered that a tax credit is “not an education plan” and that the program in question was included in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” law that included more than $1 trillion in health care spending cuts. Trump also dismantled the US Department of Education, she noted.
A first-time candidate largely self-funding his campaign in the staggeringly expensive gubernatorial race, Minogue refused to debate his Republican primary opponent, Brian Shortsleeve. For his face-off with Healey, Minogue brought a tone alternating between combative and conciliatory.
He took swings at the controversial Springfield courthouse project, which has become a flashpoint over political connections and is estimated to cost $2 billion between construction and rent over at least 40 years.
“Giving political insiders $2 billion to build a courthouse in Springfield is not integrity. It was a broken process,” Minogue said. Healey defended the courthouse project as saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and creating thousands of jobs.
The courthouse, one of the most high-profile controversies of the moment in part because losing bidders have launched a PR blitz criticizing the Healey administration, was not Minogue’s only line of attack.
He brought up a Healey staffer who was accused of trafficking cocaine and erroneously paid $31,438 after he was fired. He suggested that the state should pay taxpayers back for the nearly $500,000 settlement to an employee who said Phil Eng, Healey’s hand-picked MBTA general manager, pulled her hair during a work-related event two years ago.
Healey, in response, laid into Minogue for “questioning my integrity.”
“People can fault me for a lot of things that I did, Mike,” the former attorney general said. “But I can tell you this: I was working every day for them. I prosecuted fraud. I prosecuted corruption. I went after scam artists. I held big companies accountable. I’ve done that throughout my career.”
Minogue thanked her for that work. The candidates then spent minutes going back and forth over whether Healey supported last cycle’s ballot question to audit the Legislature — she did, but hasn’t weighed in on whether it was constitutional or if she will veto legislation that might look to circumvent the audit.
The debate glanced past one of the most searing pain points for consumers: energy costs. Healey made brief reference to her recent executive order aimed at heating cost relief as the winter looms. Minogue has pledged to cut state-mandated climate utility fees and suspend the 24-cents-a-gallon tax on gas and diesel “until prices stabilize.” Healey rolled out her own two-month gas tax holiday proposal just days later, after legislative leaders publicly scorned the idea.
Conservatives have long decried the Bay State’s reputation as “Taxachusetts,” and Minogue said he intends to lower eight different tax categories if made governor. Though Healey did not mention her own gas tax proposal, Minogue did.
“You called for it,” he said, just before the debate cut to a commercial break. “Why has the Legislature ignored you?”
The two sparred over immigration enforcement. Healey said Minogue was siding with ICE, and the immigration tactics were making residents less safe.
Lawmakers recently passed the PROTECT Act, which limits cooperation between local law enforcement and immigration agents and restricts what ICE can do without a judicial warrant in “sensitive locations.”
Minogue said he agreed that “no kid should be worried about going to school. Nobody should be worried about going to the hospital.” But he is “anti-violent criminal and drug dealer,” he said.
When she wasn’t reminding viewers about Trump, Healey leaned on her record, highlighting housing accomplishments like signing a sweeping bond bill two years ago, cutting permitting times, and allowing small accessory dwelling units by right statewide. On education, she pointed to her administration’s initiatives like free community college and said Beacon Hill must revisit local school funding formulas.
She and Minogue offered contrasting views of the state’s economic health.
“Massachusetts is a good place to live if you can afford it,” Healey said. She noted that it has one of the fastest-growing GDPs in the country and has a strong bond rating, and has attracted expanding companies like Whoop, Gillette, and AstraZeneca.
Minogue painted a more dire picture, accusing Healey of poor budget management and a failure to direct her attention toward state priorities.
“I am focused on Massachusetts. I am focused on helping,” he said. “It really doesn’t matter who the president is. We are last in Massachusetts, so you own that. We’re last in jobs. We’re most expensive — health care, electricity, education, child care — that’s been the result of your four years.”
Minogue claimed Healey was more focused on blaming Trump than advocating for the state, saying he would try to take down the political temperature and work with whoever happens to be in office, which may be a Democrat in two years.
Healey’s constant rejoinder? The most helpful thing her opponent could do is call the president and say, “Cut it out.”
Courtesy of Commonwealth Beacon
