Gov. Maura Healey announced her intention to run for a second term last week on Boston Public Radio . Leaders from Massachusetts’ Democratic and GOP parties both say they are looking forward to the race.
“I’m excited for the governor to talk to the voters, as she does every week, about what she’s accomplished,” Steve Kerrigan, chair of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, told Boston Public Radio on Monday.
Kerrigan said he’s also looking forward to seeing how Republicans themselves during the campaign by reconciling what’s happening on the federal level with the more traditional Republican candidates that have come out of Massachusetts in the past.
“I think it’s going to be a fantastic debate that will really help the people of Massachusetts understand the great things that Maura Healey and Kim Driscoll have done, and the lack of new ideas and the confusion about who the Republican Party is,” Kerrigan said.
MassGOP chair Amy Carnevale said several Republicans are already thinking about challenging Healey.
“The fact that several have come out at this point … exploring a run actively, I think speaks to the fact that they feel like Gov. Healey has not delivered,” she said.
Carnevale said that list includes Mike Kennealy, former secretary of Housing and Economic Development under Gov. Charlie Baker; Brian Shortsleeve, also of the Baker administration; and “another elected official.”
MassGOP is also working to recruit Republicans to run for state Legislature positions, where there is a Democratic supermajority. Even though some seats flipped from Democratic to Republican in the 2024 election, Carnevale said potential GOP candidates sometimes feel like it’s a “futile mission” to go to Beacon Hill.
“It’s really a question of recruitment and reaching out to business-oriented Republicans and convincing them that it’s worth running for office,” Carnevale said.
Meanwhile, Democrats are reassessing their communication tactics.
“There was a lot wrong with how we executed the ground game and all kinds of issues about messaging and whatnot,” Kerrigan said about the last presidential election. Now, state Democrats are organizing for the 2026 midterms to counter the Republican majority at the federal level, Kerrigan said.
