Maura Healey

Maura Healey (born February 8, 1971, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.) is an American Democratic politician who made history in 2022, when she became the first woman to be elected governor of Massachusetts. When she took office on January 5, 2023, Healey also became the first openly lesbian governor in the United States. She previously served as the state’s attorney general (2015–23). In 2026 Healey won a second term as governor, defeating Republican Michael Minogue in the general election.

Early life and education

Healey was born at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. Her mother, Tracy Healey, later became a school nurse, and her father, Fred Healey, worked for the U.S. Public Health Service and subsequently joined the EPA as a civil engineer. Before she was a year old, the family—which eventually included four younger siblings—relocated to Hampton Falls, a small town in New Hampshire, where she grew up on a former farm. Healey’s parents separated when she was 10 years old and eventually divorced. From that point on, Maura Healey and her siblings were raised by their mother, who later married Edward Beattie.

Healey attended Winnacunnet High School, where she was a standout point guard on the school’s basketball team, which was coached by Beattie. She was offered scholarships to several universities known for their basketball programs, but Healey opted to attend Harvard, where she studied government. She continued to play basketball, and during her junior year (1990–91), she helped the school win the Ivy League Championship. The following season she was named the team’s cocaptain. Following her graduation in 1992, Healey played for UBBC Wüstenrot Salzburg, a professional basketball team in Austria. After two years, she returned to Boston, and in 1998 she earned a law degree from Northeastern University.

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Legal career

Healey subsequently worked as a law clerk for a federal judge in Boston. She then spent eight years as an attorney at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr (now WilmerHale), an international law firm, where she focused on business and securities litigation. She also worked as a special assistant district attorney in Middlesex county, Massachusetts.

In 2007 Healey joined the state attorney general’s office, heading the civil rights division. Two years later Healey became the lead attorney for Massachusetts’s challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law that defined marriage for federal purposes as a legal union between a man and a woman. The Massachusetts case argued, among other things, that DOMA forced the state to discriminate against same-sex married couples when managing certain federal programs. In 2010 a federal judge in Boston found the law to be unconstitutional. Other legal challenges were also mounted, and DOMA was formally repealed in 2022.

Attorney general

In October 2013 Healey entered the race for Massachusetts’s attorney general. As a first-time candidate in a Democratic primary that pitted her against Warren Tolman—a veteran politician who had the backing of Gov. Deval Patrick—Healey was considered the underdog. However, in an upset, she won the Democratic nomination, earning about 62 percent of the vote. Healey went on to win the general election in 2014, beating her Republican opponent John Miller by roughly the same margin and becoming the first openly LGBTQ person elected as a state attorney general. She took office in 2015 and was reelected three years later.

During Healey’s tenure, Massachusetts sued Pres. Donald Trump’s administration 96 times, and in most instances those suits were successful. In 2018 she filed suit against Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family for their roles in the opioid epidemic. Healey took what was then an unprecedented step of naming not just the pharmaceutical company that made OxyContin but also individual members of the family that controlled and oversaw it. A multibillion-dollar settlement was reached in 2021 but was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2025 Massachusetts joined other U.S. states in accepting a $7.4 billion settlement.

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Governor

In 2022 Healey announced her candidacy for governor. Later that year she defeated her Republican opponent, Geoff Diehl, to become the first woman elected governor of Massachusetts. She and Tina Kotek (Oregon) were the first openly lesbian women to be elected governor, though Healey took office several days before Kotek in 2023. As governor, Healey has framed LGBTQ rights as central to Massachusetts’s state identity. She mounted a public relations campaign for her state, paying for billboards in Texas and Florida that featured images of same-sex couples alongside the tagline: “Massachusetts: For us all.” Both of those states had recently passed laws restricting LGBTQ rights.

Another key issue during Healey’s first term was immigration. In 2023 Massachusetts experienced a dramatic increase in its migrant population, overburdening its shelter system. As the only state with a right-to-shelter law (established in 1983), Massachusetts is legally obligated to provide housing and basic necessities to homeless families with children and pregnant women. In August Healey declared a state of emergency, and two months later she placed a cap on the number of families for which the state would be held responsible, with additional families being placed on a waiting list. Later that year she signed a budget bill that included increased funding for the state’s shelters.

Healey was also a vocal critic of Trump, whose second term as president began in 2025. She spoke out against his administration’s environmental policies and criticized his handling of the economy. Healey also opposed his immigration enforcement efforts and notably signed legislation that limited ICE’s activities in the state. When Healey announced in January 2026 that she was running for reelection, she used the opportunity to denounce Trump. In a campaign video she accused Trump of “making everything worse.” She defeated Republican Michael Minogue in the general election in November 2026.

Personal life

Healey is not married, but she is in a long-term relationship with Joanna Lydgate. The two women met in 2010 while working in the attorney general’s office. When Healey became attorney general in 2015, Lydgate joined her staff, eventually becoming chief deputy. Lydgate resigned in 2020, and several months later they began dating. Lydgate has two children from an earlier marriage.