For the first time this election season, Governor Maura Healey and her Republican challenger Michael Minogue went one-on-one in a testy debate Thursday evening where President Trump seemed to feature as prominently as the candidates’ positions on issues.
The debate, the first of two in a week’s span, generated multiple tense moments between the two candidates, including one over a federal scholarship tax credit and another over the state’s controversial proposal to build a $2 billion courthouse in Springfield.
Healey referenced Trump dozens of times throughout the hour-long matchup in an effort to paint Minogue as a proxy for the Republican president, while Minogue, a first-time candidate, presented himself as a longtime registered independent willing to work with presidents from both parties.
Here are four takeaways from the debate, described by WBZ host and moderator Jon Keller as “a firehose from both directions.”
Trump factored in heavily
Trump was top of mind for Healey, factoring into nearly every one of her answers. And as she has done repeatedly on the campaign trail, Healey consistently tried to tie Minogue to the president.
“He saw what Donald Trump did in his first term and said, ‘I want more of that,’ ” Healey said of Minogue, who raised money for the Trump campaign, including at a 2024 fund-raiser in Gloucester. “He invited [Vice President] JD Vance to his house. My opponent is somebody who supports Donald Trump’s agenda.”
But the GOP nominee and former Abiomed executive chafed at party labels, describing himself as an “independent for 19 years.”
And in one of the few moments where Minogue directly responded to Healey’s Trump-connected attacks, Minogue said, “You keep blaming somebody in D.C., and we know who it is.”
“I am Mike Minogue. I am a father. I am a husband. I am a combat veteran. I am a person who ran a business,” he said, adding: “You keep trying to name-call. You know what you’re doing? You’re name-calling me.”
Healey at one point accused Minogue of being “afraid to call Donald Trump and tell him to get ICE out of our communities and tell him to stop this war” in Iran.
But Minogue shot back, telling Healey he is “not running for president or senator.”
“I’m running for governor, and the governor cares about Massachusetts,” he said. “And two years into the next governor’s term, we’re going to have a new president.”
Conflict over costs
The two repeatedly quibbled over who is to blame for the state’s high utility costs.
Given the region is highly dependent on natural gas, New England has some of the highest energy prices in the country; Healey repeatedly attributed those rising costs to Trump, pointing to his war in Iran and tariffs on other countries.
“I know folks are hurting, and by the way, it’s Donald Trump and my opponent who are helping drive up energy costs because they want to kill things that are cheaper in terms of energy, like wind and solar and battery storage,” Healey said.
Just last week, Healey asked the Trump administration to expedite its review of a natural gas pipeline expansion project in New England.
Minogue charged Healey “stopped the gas pipelines” when she was attorney general, a reference to a boast she made during her 2022 campaign, and, as a result, “we are doomed to have the most expensive electricity, that will impact people this winter at the highest rate ever.”
Minogue has worked tax-cutting into his main talking points, arguing that most residents cannot afford to live in Massachusetts because of what he calls overtaxation.
“I want to make sure that we focus on stopping overspending, which makes overtaxing happen, and then overregulating,” he said. “We already have eight taxes. Those taxes continue to go up.”
Healey pointed to a law she signed in 2023 that promised $1 billion in tax relief for residents and also claimed the state budgets she has signed have kept spending growth in check.
“I’ve done that while cutting taxes, not raising taxes, and today we have a better bond rating,” she said.
Springfield courthouse looms large
The controversial $2 billion deal to build a courthouse in Springfield has rankled Western Massachusetts officials and become a rallying cry for Minogue as an example of government waste.
The state’s deal with a team that includes a politically connected group of developers involves a 40-year lease with the potential for two decade-long extensions.
Under immense pressure and a lawsuit challenging the deal, one of the developers — interim Massachusetts Convention Center Authority director John Barros — said he would “divest” from the contract, a point Minogue underscored several times Thursday, saying “if he withdraws, his whole bid should be withdrawn.”
Healey defended the deal, saying that the city’s aging, mold-infested courthouse needed to be replaced and that it would be constructed ahead of schedule and create “thousands of jobs.”
“A judge actually looked at it and said the process was perfect,” she said, referencing a court decision that rejected a request from a group of losing bidders to temporarily block the state from moving forward.
Minogue, who calls the deal an example of “corruption and incompetence,” fired back.
“Giving political insiders $2 billion to build a courthouse in Springfield is not integrity. It was a broken process,” he said. “. . . It sounds like a Ponzi scheme that it’s a good deal to spend $2 billion on a courthouse.”
Things got chippy. A lot.
Throughout the debate, Healey and Minogue spoke over and at one another, frequently prompting Keller to cut them off. “No one can understand what either of you is saying, and I know it’s annoying to the people at home,” he said at one point.
Early in the debate, Minogue accused Healey of hating the Republican Party in a back-and-forth over whether to opt into the Trump administration’s federal scholarship tax credit program, under which taxpayers can donate to a nonprofit scholarship granting organization of their choice and get an income tax credit up to $1,700 to match that donation.
Healey has said she’s reviewing the program, while Minogue has embraced the scholarship offer as a key plank of his campaign.
“This is an example where Maura Healey hates the other party more than she cares about our kids,” he said.
Healey hit back, saying, “I don’t actually hate anyone.”
Minogue also accused the governor of backing a corrupt process for the Springfield courthouse, prompting Healey to defend the lease agreement as affordable for the state and question Minogue’s understanding of the project.
“The Springfield courthouse was not part of the capital budget,” she said. “Do you know what that means?”
When Minogue brought up a nearly $500,000 settlement the MBTA reached with an employee whose hair interim transportation secretary Phil Eng pulled, as well as a former Healey staffer who was charged with cocaine trafficking, Healey went on the defensive, saying she “prosecuted fraud. I prosecuted corruption. I went after scam artists. I held big companies accountable.”
Then, Minogue thanked her for her work as attorney general.
“I don’t know why you’re thanking me,” she said. “Do me the decency of not questioning my integrity.”
Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross. Chris Van Buskirk can be reached at chris.vanb@globe.com. Follow him on X @byChrisVan