Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Minogue is blasting Democratic incumbent Gov. Maura Healey for Thursday night’s debate on WBZ-TV, where Healey mentioned President Trump over 30 times as she continues tying Minogue to the president and his policies.
“If your record is last in everything and most expensive in everything, you’ve got to talk about something else other than your record. But what’s interesting is we got 25 days left. Now she’s going to try to help something,” Minogue told the Herald over the phone Friday morning.
Healey took just nine seconds to mention President Trump, going on to refer to the president a total of 32 times throughout the debate, continuing a theme of pushing the narrative that Minogue is a “rubber stamp” for Trump, “MAGA Republicans,” and their policies.
“You know, as I look at the situation right now that people are in, Donald Trump is driving costs up every single day with his tariffs, with his war which is raising the cost of everything from gas to groceries and also he’s gutting funding, gutting health care and making life more expensive and more difficult for everyone,” Healey said in her opening monologue.
“I just want to be really clear here: my opponent is somebody who wrote a million dollar check to Donald Trump. He saw what Donald Trump did in his first term and said, ‘I want more of that.’ He invited JD Vance to his house,” Healey said later in the debate. “My opponent is someone who supports Donald Trump’s agenda, which has been raising costs.”
Minogue, who did not directly call Healey out for the frequent deflections to Trump during the debate, instead responded by saying “the question is: what can you do to help the people? Not, ‘who do we blame?’” as he spoke of his West Point education and military service and dove into his goal of mitigating what he calls “overt spending” on Beacon Hill.
It’s a calculated campaign strategy that could pay off for Healey as she appeals to her Democratic base, one that is in no short supply in deep blue Massachusetts. If she uses Trump to motivate enough of her base to support her at the polls, it could be all Healey needs to secure reelection.
Following the debate, and as she exited the Brighton television studio, Healey doubled down on her attempt to link Minogue to Trump and the MAGA movement when pressed by the Herald about the strategy.
“Look, Trump is on the ballot in this election and there’s a clear choice in this election. My opponent, he’s somebody who’s a Trump supporter. He helped get him elected. He wrote him a million dollar check after seeing all the damage he did his first term. He’s someone who aligns with what Trump supports,” Healey responded in the WBZ-TV lobby, going on to criticize Minogue for highlighting her legislative actions ICE.
“I think people can see pretty clearly what’s happening in our communities with ICE and how destructive ICE has been,” Healey said. “I’ve done things to protect people from ICE. And his criticism is that I’m not cooperating enough with ICE. It’s just not the reality.”
She continued, “We have big differences on abortion. We didn’t get into that tonight, but my opponent is anti-choice. And I want women to have, always in Massachusetts, access to abortion and the health care that they need, especially with Donald Trump as president, who campaigned on overturning Roe.”
Healey continued her lengthy response by going on to criticize Trump’s economic agenda, foreign policy, defunding of colleges and universities, and more.
Minogue said, “She is not a leader.
“She’s not accountable. It’s easy to blame others. It’s harder to lead and she’s had the title as governor, she’s had a favorable legislature in place and she’s had the largest budget ever spent in the history of Massachusetts for four years. And our results are terrible. So, she’s got to distract people from that,” Minogue added.
“I’m a leader. I am accountable. She is a politician and she blames others. However, after the first two years of her, we were still last in jobs and still going in the wrong direction. So, she should figure out whether that was either Charlie Baker’s fault or President Biden’s. But at a certain point when you’re four years in the job, leaders are accountable, leaders have to get results,” he said.
Healey and Minogue will participate in another scheduled televised debate on October 15, hosted by WCVB-TV, WBUR and the Boston Globe.
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