FALL RIVER — Fresh from their primary coronations, Governor Maura Healey and Republican challenger Michael Minogue both said Wednesday that they are running against the failed records of their political opponents this fall.
The thing is, their foils look very different.
After coasting through her Democratic race unopposed on Tuesday, Healey used her first public campaign stop in this South Coast city to again predominantly frame her reelection effort as one countering President Trump.
Minogue, opting to hold no public events the day after a landslide victory in his Republican primary, cast his first bid for public office as undoing Healey’s “failed” first four years as governor.
The dichotomy offered both a taste of what voters can expect in the newly formed general election fight, and, for the candidates, a test of how central Trump remains to the concerns, fears, and desires that animate their choices at the ballot.
During an event outside a veterans’ center here on the South Coast, Healey said she believes that “Trump is on the ballot this year,” and that residents should worry about the president, even if he is barred from seeking a third term in the White House and will, literally speaking, not appear next to her name in November.
“You have somebody as president right now who is doing things that directly hurt the residents and the economy of Massachusetts and our businesses, and we need to make sure that there’s leadership always coming out of the corner office that’s going to protect our state,” she said.
It’s a message Healey has repeatedly hit on this year in major speeches, in which she’s framed Trump as the cause of the state’s woes. The president, she said Tuesday night, is “raising your costs, he’s terrorizing our communities, he’s taking away your health care and your rights.”
And Healey leaned further into Trump on Wednesday by spending the first day of her general election campaign in Fall River, which in 2024 voted Republican for the first time in roughly a century, helping illustrate the region’s shift into a political hotbed for Republicans.
State Senator Michael Rodrigues, the chamber’s powerful budget chief and a Democrat from nearby Westport, downplayed Fall River’s lurch right, but said Healey is nonetheless right to not take its voters “for granted.”
“The fact that a little mini-red wave swept over Bristol County a couple years ago, I don’t think that will be repeated,” Rodrigues told the Globe.
Minogue, who has tapped his vast wealth to rise from political obscurity to help lead the GOP ticket, said Healey’s focus on Trump helps her “not talk about her failed four years of leadership and management.”
The former executive of a medical device company, Minogue has leaned heavily on his private-sector and military experience in his stump speeches, and said Wednesday that he is better suited to be governor because he has plans — albeit largely undefined ones — he said would make life affordable in Massachusetts.
“She needs to focus on solving the problems, not campaigning on them,” Minogue said of Healey.
Though Minogue and Healey have offered broad outlines of what they hope to accomplish if elected in November, they have seldom offered specifics on the campaign trail.
Minogue released a health care plan this summer focused largely on increasing access to primary care and lowering insurance costs. And Healey’s campaign aides have argued she has a record of seeking ways to make life better for residents, be it pushing for zoning reforms to increase housing construction or proposing to cap the resale price of event tickets.
Pressed to name her second-term priorities Wednesday, Healey stuck to sweeping statements — building more housing, growing the economy, and investing in transportation. She pointed to, among other things, signing a law to make community college tuition-free.
“There’s a lot that we’ve got planned,” she said. “There’s a lot we want to work on.”
She then turned back to Trump.
“To be clear, Trump is on the ballot, and I’ll tell you why: Every single day, the actions taken by the Trump administration hurt people around the country, hurt people in Massachusetts,” she said.
Costas Panagopoulos, a Northeastern University political science professor, said it benefits Healey to keep the attention on Trump because many voters’ ”decisions in November will come down to how they feel about President Trump and current political and economic conditions.”
But eventually, he said, voters will want to hear something more.
“It may not be sufficient to just go after Trump, but to make the case for what she’s done for Massachusetts since being elected, and perhaps equally as important, what she plans to do looking forward,” Panagopoulos said. “Politicians sometimes forget that voters are looking for something to vote for — and not simply something or someone to vote against.”
Minogue said that if elected governor, he would audit the state’s $63 billion state budget to find “fraud, waste, and excess” and, he said, give money back to taxpayers.
He also said he wants to bring in more natural gas from Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania and boost the state’s reliance on nuclear energy to lower utility bills.
But he left the details out for now.
“I’ll give you more information . . . the next time we get together,” he said.
Chris Van Buskirk can be reached at chris.vanb@globe.com. Follow him on X @byChrisVan