When Governor Maura Healey’s first two Republican challengers launched their campaigns for governor last year, they put immigration front and center, blasting the “sanctuary state” policies and migrant crisis they argued were squeezing the state’s shelter system and blowing a hole in the state’s budget.
Now, in the run-up to the November election, it’s Healey who’s seeking to use the issue in her favor.
Amid the sometimes deadly federal crackdown, Healey has turned immigration into one of the central themes of her reelection pitch, casting herself as a bulwark against President Trump.
On the campaign trail, she regularly touts her decision to sign the so-called PROTECT Act, a law aimed, in part, at preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from detaining immigrants in “sensitive areas,” such as public schools, child care centers, and health care centers.
The message is permeating her campaign ads, at times taking on an ominous tone. A clip her campaign is circulating on social media splices shots of Republican gubernatorial nominee Michael Minogue talking about ICE and immigration with footage of ICE officers in action, including one incident where officers attempted to take a young child from the arms of a Fitchburg man who appeared to be having a seizure.
Minogue “supports ICE,” Healey says in a different ad her campaign put out this month. “Protecting our neighbors from ICE” flashes across the screen in yet another spot released Tuesday.
Minogue has said he would not have signed the PROTECT Act if he was governor, saying it was “not really an enforceable thing.” But he indicated in a statement Tuesday that he supports keeping ICE out of some areas even while he accused Healey of embracing “divisive rhetoric.”
“We can all agree ICE should stay out of daycare centers, hospitals and schools. We can all agree that processes and protocols need to be reviewed and transparent,” he said. “A governor’s job is to communicate and cooperate with local, state, and federal law enforcement to focus on the dangerous criminals to keep our people and our law enforcement safe.”
The messaging among Massachusetts pols has taken a 180-degree turn since the last election cycle, when it was “the economy and immigration which swept Trump into office,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.
“But the vitriol that was generated two years ago has been replaced with the economic fallout that has resulted” from new federal immigration policies, he said.
At the same time, the Trump administration’s moves to tighten immigration may have helped ease the crush of families that stretched the state’s limited resources for emergency shelter.
The number of families in the state’s once-overflowing emergency shelter system is at the lowest it’s been since Healey took office more than three and a half years ago, according to her office. The number of families in emergency shelters, which at one point topped 7,000, is down to roughly 1,500 as of last week, state data show.
Lawmakers included about $260 million for the system in the annual budget Healey signed in July, a fraction of the nearly $1 billion the state shelled out in fiscal year 2025.
And the parade of headlines about no-bid contracts state officials inked to quickly prop up temporary shelters or the initial lack of a system to run full background checks on those entering into the system have largely receded from the campaign trail.
That said, those decisions could still emerge as an attack line, Paleologos said, including “whether it shows poor stewardship or a mishandling of the situation.”
Have thoughts on the immigration debate? Leave us a comment here.
EARLY TO THE PARTY: The November election is still weeks away, but at least one Massachusetts Republican is already looking ahead to the next fight: who will lead the state party come January.
Gene Parini, chair of the Sandwich Republican Town Committee, said Tuesday that he plans to run for chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party when members of the GOP state committee gather early next year to elect their next leader.
Parini, who ran unsuccessfully for Sandwich select board last year, said he was spurred to run after watching dozens of Democratic candidates coast into office this election cycle without opposition.
“And our two most powerful political officials are unopposed,” Parini said, referring to House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka (Sorry, Governor!). “To me, that is just wrong.”
Parini’s decision to run sets up a potential battle with current Mass. GOP chair Amy Carnevale, though it’s unclear if she’ll seek another term.
“I am focused on working for our candidates heading into Election Day,” she said in a statement Tuesday. “That is my only concern right now.”
Carnevale took the helm of the beleaguered state party in 2023, wresting control of an operation that was weighed down by lawsuits, hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt — it’s not totally out of the woods on that front — and a mess of alleged campaign violations.
TEXAS BLUE-STEP? Texas Democrats have long said they’ll turn the red state blue. Is this the year it’s real? by Emma Platoff, The Boston Globe: Texas Democrats have been promising for more than a decade now that they’ve got a candidate who can actually win this reliably red state. So far, each bid has ended in disappointment. But this time is different, Texas Democrats say: In Senate nominee James Talarico, they have found their most promising recruit yet.
RE-TERM: What will happen in the 2026 midterms? Consider how it might be 2006 all over again by James Pindell, The Boston Globe: No one election year is a perfect comparison to another. But five weeks out from the 2026 midterm elections, the parallels with 2006 are almost uncanny, to the point where they are a useful frame of reference for what might happen in the closing days.
DIVINE INTERVENTION: Some of Massachusetts’s Catholic bishops are raising their voices in the nascent fight over the state’s new abortion law.
Boston Archbishop Richard Henning and the bishops of Worcester, Fall River and Springfield are urging their clergy and parishioners to support an effort to suspend and ultimately repeal the law that makes it easier for women to receive an abortion later in pregnancy, the Globe’s Chris Van Buskirk writes in.
The intervention comes as anti-abortion activists move to collect signatures for a ballot campaign aimed at stopping the law from taking effect in November. The measure, which Healey signed in August, made Massachusetts’s abortion laws among the broadest in the country.
Worcester Bishop Robert J. McManus, Fall River Bishop Edgar M. da Cunha, Springfield Bishop William D. Byrne, and Henning called the law “immoral” in a letter published by The Catholic Free Press, the official publication of the Catholic Diocese of Worcester.
“This law is a tragedy, and the Catholic legislators who helped to enact it have caused grave scandal,” they wrote in a letter addressed to “the Clergy, Religious, and Lay Faithful” of Massachusetts.
The bishops noted there’s an “effort underway to pause and even possibly overturn” the law. “We encourage you to take part in this effort and raise your own voice in opposition to the law and in favor of life.”
The new law reshapes the rules for how women can terminate their pregnancies at 24 weeks or after. State law had allowed abortion at that stage only under specific circumstances, including to preserve a patient’s life. The new law leaves the decision to end a pregnancy entirely to “the professional judgment of a physician.”
Healey, who is Catholic, signed the bill after hearing from women and families facing difficult medical decisions, said Jacqueline Manning, a Healey spokesperson.
“She believes that those women and families should have been able to get the care they needed here in Massachusetts and it was unfair to force them to travel to other states,” Manning said in a statement. “That is why she signed this bill.”
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: A new MassINC Polling Group/CommonWealth Beacon survey put each of nine ballot questions to the test. The most intense (and expensive) bout of ballot question campaigning is likely still yet to come, but here’s where Massachusetts voters stand with about five weeks to go, per Tuesday’s poll:
🟢 Right now at least, two questions — Questions 1 and 9 — appear to be on track to pass, should their support hold come November.
Of the 800 likely voters surveyed, 70 percent said they would vote ‘yes’ on Question 9, which would keep in place a gun control package lawmakers passed in 2024. And 63 percent said they support Question 1, which would apply the state’s public records law to the Legislature and governor’s office.
🟡 Voters don’t appear quite as sold on a slew of other ballot questions.
Questions that would allow residents to register to vote on Election Day (Question 4), funnel a portion of state sales taxes toward a new natural resource conservation fund (Question 6), and reshape zoning laws to make it easier to build single-family homes on small lots (Question 7) all saw support from a little more than half of those polled.
Slightly less popular were three others: Proposals that would allow Committee for Public Counsel Services employees to collectively bargain (Question 2); eliminate the state’s party primaries and replace them with a system in which all primary candidates would be listed on a single ballot (Question 3); and tweak the state’s obscure tax cap law (Question 5) all had support that hovered in the 40s.
🔴 Voters don’t seem interested in unraveling a law legalizing recreational marijuana that they approved at the ballot a decade ago. Sixty-one percent of those surveyed said they plan to vote “no” on Question 8, which would leave the law unchanged.
These New England immigrants arrived legally. Now, thousands will lose Medicaid benefits. by Jason Laughlin, The Boston Globe.
What happened to the men accused of buying sex in the Cambridge brothel ring? by Sean Cotter, The Boston Globe.
ICE to buy modified Boston Dynamics robot dogs in $1.3 million contract by Yogev Toby, The Boston Globe.
Rats are constantly talking to each other. In Boston, scientists are using AI to eavesdrop by Eve Zuckoff, WBUR.
Healey, running for reelection, says it’s full steam ahead on Springfield courthouse by Jim Kinney, The Springfield Republican.
Wild Idea: MBTA Could Enlist Raptors To Help Make Its Stations Less Crappy via StreetsblogMASS.
Correction: Due to incorrect information provided to the Globe, Tuesday’s newsletter misidentified Angela Brown as a participant in a new Committee to Protect Cannabis Regulation ad. Brown did not appear in the ad. The Globe regrets the error.
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This newsletter was edited and produced by Matt Stout.
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Kelly Garrity can be reached at kelly.garrity@globe.com.