The top candidates for Massachusetts governor — Democratic incumbent Maura Healey and Republican Mike Minogue — faced off for their first debate Thursday night at Boston television station WBZ CBS Boston. But Western Massachusetts made more than one appearance. WAMC's Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief James Paleologopoulos broke down the debate on Northeast Notebook Live with WAMC's Sam Dingman and Annie Bennett.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Dingman: Well, James, you've obviously been covering this gubernatorial contest for months, and now we've got this debate in the books. Tell us what the lay of the land looks like.
Paleologopoulos: Right. So, the race has been firming up for the last few months as Healey and Minogue enter the home stretch. Of course, Governor Healey is seeking a second term and has about four years of work to promote. We heard a lot about free community college, the massive housing bond bill she signed, and other efforts last night. And then, there's Mike Minogue, a longtime GOP supporter and a former CEO of medical device company Abiomed, who is trying to unseat Healey. He's touting a record of job creation, military discipline, and experience, and more. They have both been sharpening their sticks, barbs against one another for some time now, and we saw plenty of those Thursday night.
Minogue: Blaming others is easy. Leadership is harder. Governor Healey. You had the title, you had the legislature, you had the biggest budget ever spent by any governor, 2x what Charlie Baker spent in his four years, and we're last in jobs, and we have the most expensive healthcare.
Healey: The best thing that Mike Minogue could do to lower costs in this state is to call his friend Donald Trump or [Vice President] J.D. Vance, who he supported, who he helped elect, who he gave a million dollars to, and say, "End this war [in Iran], cut it out with the tariffs." These things are raising our prices.
Paleologopoulos: So to be clear, those are two separate clips from across the debate, but they really tell the story of the whole debate. Also, a fact check: Minogue has donated considerably to Republican causes, including various Trump-tied committees and groups, but not a big old million-dollar check, as was just said. More on that in a second. But Minogue spent a lot of time Thursday bearing down on affordability in the state. It's a national issue, of course, but the Republican really focused on how Healey has had Democratic majorities in the legislature, and that, in his view, she hasn't done enough to bring down the state's cost of living. Massachusetts is routinely dubbed one of the most expensive states to live in in the union. Healey, meanwhile, had plenty of retorts, including actions her administration has taken to lower prices, including targeted utility bill relief earlier this year. And right now, Healey also spent a lot of time denouncing President Donald Trump and how the administration's cuts have had huge impacts on the state's education and research sectors. She then, in turn, tied Minogue to the current administration, whether it's donations or a fundraiser, as we just heard. ... He hosted a J.D. Vance fundraiser in 2024.
Bennett: James, if I recall, you've actually done some reporting that sort of foreshadowed a lot of this debate.
Paleologopoulos: You foreshadowed correctly. Yes, absolutely. So props to Western New England University political science professor Tim Vercellotti. We spoke with him earlier this year, and he sort of indirectly predicted what we ended up hearing on Thursday. Minogue maneuvering around the Trump "albatross" [that] state Democrats have been trying to hang around his neck. Vercellotti also mentioned Healey would likely need to spend a lot of time promoting accomplishments while maintaining a tone of more needs to be done on affordability. The job's not done. We definitely saw that.
Dingman: Here's a little more tape of Healey.
Healey: I've also been building 100,000 homes so that we can lower housing costs. I want young people, especially, to be able to afford to live here. I've capped co-pays and deductibles. I've made community college free. I've cut business regulations by 25% to make it easier and less expensive for companies to do business here. I'm working every day to find ways to make life more affordable for you. All the while, our president is making it more expensive.
Paleologopoulos: Yeah, so Trump made a lot of appearances in this debate. Minogue, meanwhile, kept hammering Healey on the state's relatively low job growth rates. He went as far, and we heard this earlier, went as far as to claim Massachusetts has been last or bottom of the barrel in job growth. We're having a hard time finding where those numbers came from, though he could have been referring to a report detailing some tough job losses in August. Minogue also called out how the state lags when it comes to building permitting and how towns across the Commonwealth are facing budget crunches and higher property taxes.
Dingman: Here's a little bit more Minogue.
Minogue: We have towns that keep jacking up their [property taxes] because they need infrastructure overrides. We're now doing overrides not for schools. We're doing overrides just to make it work. And the amount of grants that we give to towns and cities is $1.3 billion. Yet healthcare has gone up 250%. It needs to be more than that.
Dingman: Alright, so with all of that being said, James, you know, we teased at the top that Western Mass featured prominently in the debate. Did it in fact do that?
Paleologopoulos: Yes, it did, and I would venture to say, well, let's start with this: whether they wanted to or not, a lot of Eastern Mass residents got to hear about the Springfield Regional Justice Center project that we've been reporting on for the past year.
Minogue: So I think it's important, and I think we both agree, that we want to make sure we have accountability and integrity in the government. Giving political insiders $2 billion to build a courthouse in Springfield is not integrity. It was a broken process.
Paleologopoulos: Right. So a lot to unpack there. There's only so much time, and I feel like to get to all the nuances, I kind of have to re-report everything I filed so far. But to make a very long story short, for the past few months, media outlets like our own have been reporting at length about the so-called $2 billion courthouse. It's a big, big project to replace the Roderick L. Ireland Courthouse in Springfield. It's an infamously sick building. Mold has been a common problem, among other things. It's caused a plethora — I love saying that word plethora, but I don't love this part — plethora of health problems for staff working in it. The state agrees it has to go. But how it's being replaced has been a real lightning rod for the Healey administration. Minogue kind of seized on what's largely been ... reporting shorthand —a $2 billion courthouse, in the sense that the private developer who builds the new courthouse would collect well over a billion dollars over a span of 40 years as the state pays rent. That's still a lot of money.
Dingman: Yeah
Paleologopoulos: The state and Healey maintain that it is technically still cheaper and faster in several ways to just get the new courthouse built, rather than the state building its own replacement. But $2 billion is a big number. It shows up in, like, I've seen Boston Herald headlines. ... It's been brought up a lot for the Healey administration to address. Also, a lot of critics have seized on how, at one point, John Barros, the interim head of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, ... and Conan Harris, the husband of Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, both have been attached to the winning bid. They're part of the group. There's multiple parties in the group, but either way, Harris still is. But Barros divested, separated himself, even after his participation was found to not really be an issue, so long as he disclosed his ties properly, as dictated by the state ethics commission. Again, I'm re-reporting this whole story because it's a big kit and caboodle. ...
Dingman: It seems like there's a lot of issues contained in this one structure.
Paleologopoulos: There really is.
Bennett: A plethora, if you will.
Dingman: A plethora. There you go.
Paleologopoulos: You're using my words against me. Alright, no. Either way, to just wrap this up, it's been the subject of a court injunction sought by two developers who were passed over for the project, and as Healey has pointed out, those challenges have largely been swatted down.
Healey: It went through a procurement process. A judge actually looked at it and said the process was perfect. There were no flaws in it, and it saves the taxpayers $300 million and gets this courthouse built well ahead of time, years ahead of time, and I think that's important. So I looked at it. I don't know how you look at it. It saves taxpayers money. It's going deliver a product ahead of schedule, and it also was the best recommendation of the trial court. And the developer who was selected was the only developer with any experience building courthouses. Also, it's going to create thousands of jobs in Springfield.
Dingman: Last 10 seconds here, James. Who is leading in the polls in this race?
Paleologopoulos: Right. So Healey has been the favorite the entire time — double-digit leads. The most recent poll shows Minogue closing the gap a little bit. Healey is no longer leading by 20-plus. Plus-16 is the Healey lead, according to the latest University of New Hampshire poll.
Dingman: James Paleologopoulos, thank you for joining us.
Bennett: Thank you, James.
Paleologopoulos: Oh, thank you.
