Editor’s note: This is one of two profiles about the partners of Massachusetts’s major-party candidates for governor.
Joanna Lydgate’s partner burst through the back door with their two teenagers and an armful of bags from Noodle Market. Boxes of Thai food, typical Sunday fare, are unpacked as the kids head upstairs to do their homework.
It’s the sort of domestic scene that plays out in any number of Greater Boston homes. But there’s also a State Police detail parked outside, and an official FIFA World Cup ball sits on the mantle of their modest Arlington home — trappings that come with Lydgate’s partner’s day job: Governor.
The whole scene is “definitely not” where Lydgate, 45, said she ever expected to be, but as Maura Healey’s partner for five-plus years, she’s grown into a new identity as a first lady while simultaneously crafting what that title means.
Her identity as a private person and protective mother of teenagers has also injected a desire for privacy into the way Healey runs her office. That, in turn, has led Healey to break from her predecessors and her own past practice, causing tension at times.
As for Lydgate’s role, it’s mostly what she makes of it; the state Constitution doesn’t mention a first lady at all.
“Typically, what I’m thinking about is trying to bring attention to an issue, trying to show up for a community, trying to support Maura in the work that she’s doing,” Lydgate said. Another goal is to “make sure that it’s something that my daughter and her friends can aspire to as well.”
In the last three years, Lydgate has welcomed troops home from deployment, bounced a baby on her lap at a press conference announcing maternal health legislation, and petted a brown Swiss show cow at the Topsfield Fair. She poured gravy over mashed potatoes at a communal Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless at TD Garden and traveled to Minnesota alongside first spouses to represent the state at the Special Olympics.
She also leads the nonpartisan voting rights group, The States United Democracy Center, while backing Healey, a Democrat, off and occasionally on the campaign trail.
But she also traveled to Puerto Rico with Healey and attended a black-tie state dinner at the White House, both of which were not disclosed to the public ahead of time. Both drew scrutiny, in part because Healey came into office pledging to bring more transparency to the executive suite “than ever before.”
“My personal life is my personal life,” Healey told reporters at the time. “I’m going to work to make sure that privacy is maintained for my family.”
The couple’s desire for privacy predates Healey’s election. Months before Election Day, Healey quietly moved with Lydgate to an apartment in North Cambridge, a change she did not share with campaign finance officials or the general public.
One of her colleagues, in an interview, told the Globe they didn’t even know Lydgate was in a queer relationship, let alone with a sitting governor.
At Healey’s inauguration, she watched the procession from the upstairs gallery in the State House Chamber apart from Healey’s family as Healey became the nation’s first openly lesbian governor.
Lydgate and Healey publicly disclosed their relationship shortly after in an interview with Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham. Today, both wear slim diamond bands on their left ring fingers, but are not legally married.
Raised by a Wellesley College French professor and a freelance journalist in Belmont, Lydgate aspired to be a journalist herself.
After graduating with an English degree from Yale University in 2003, she moved to New York City and worked in legal services jobs, helping foster care kids in the Bronx navigate juvenile delinquency proceedings and assisting refugees seeking political asylum in the US.
She later graduated from UC Berkeley School of Law before taking a fellowship in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office under then-AG Martha Coakley. She left for a clerkship, then returned to work on Healey’s successful 2014 campaign to succeed Coakley. Eventually, she became head of policy and, later, Healey’s chief deputy.
Mike Firestone, who first worked with Lydgate on Healey’s campaign and then in the AG’s office, recalled that when the state was building its case against pharmaceutical giant and OxyContin maker Purdue, Lydgate temporarily relocated about three blocks away to be more hands-on.
That passion for the work, he said, brought Lydgate and Healey together. But he said Lydgate “clearly had to get comfortable with a certain degree of public visibility” in her current role.
“Lawyers are most comfortable working on cases, making arguments, writing briefs” in relative obscurity, said Firestone, now the City of Boston’s chief legal counsel.
Lydgate’s career path changed in 2020, with, of all things, a tweet.
“2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” President Trump wrote.
Lydgate decided to take a leave of absence from the AG’s office to lead States United, a nonprofit that helps election administrators and brings legal challenges to protect voting rights. After the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Congress, the leave of absence became permanent.
“I knew Trump was going to litigate like crazy all across the country,” Lydgate said. “And I knew those offices were under-resourced.”
Her role as chief executive at States United, from which she draws a roughly $417,000 salary, is nonpartisan, which she says she strives to maintain.
Lydgate insists that “as first lady, politics almost never come into play.”
Still, she has at times been a presence on the campaign trail, traveling with Healey in 2024 to campaign for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania, for example. She’ll occasionally agree to do a favor for Healey’s campaign, such as lending her name to a fund-raising email.
“That is more the exception than the rule,” she said.
Even close colleagues say Lydgate has kept her home life relatively clandestine.
Stephen Richer, a States United advisory board member and former elections official in Maricopa County, Ariz., recalled Lydgate bringing him over to meet her partner at an event last year. He was surprised to then meet Healey.
“I texted her: ‘I think you should have told me you were married to the governor,’” said Richer, who has known Lydgate since 2021. “I didn’t even know Joanna was a lesbian.”
Becoming first lady at the same time she came out as gay has been a challenge, Lydgate said. And while other people have busy partners that keep them away from home, she feels a unique loss of privacy.
“The experience of having to sort of be doing a lot to manage a household, that’s not unique,” she said. “But the public scrutiny . . . those things are different.”
Maintaining a sense of normalcy is hard, Lydgate’s friends say.
“The idea of having a private life or just being able to be yourself disappears,” said Stephen Bullock, the former Democratic governor of Montana and a member of the States United advisory board. The political partner “didn’t ask for this, but you’re given this unique power, responsibility, and obligation.”
Utah’s first lady, Abby Cox, said she bonded with Lydgate over parenting and navigating how to carve out a path in the nebulous role.
“I applaud her for being out there and true to who she is,” Cox said, noting that her family comes from a small, conservative town with little exposure to the LGBTQ community. “I have become a more compassionate and open person because of them.”
Sitting on her couch with Healey to her left, Lydgate pondered her current role as she flicked a tuft of dog hair from her jeans.
“I definitely could never have imagined it,” Lydgate said. “I certainly imagined being in public service.”
But as the blended family sat down to tuck into their noodles, the dynamic was more archetypal than atypical.
Lydgate’s son, who is currently taking a civics class, offered that he was recently quizzed on what the governor does.
Healey, smiling, was quick with a question. “Did you get it right?”
Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross.