SHIRLEY — The Republican nominee for governor, Michael Minogue, brought his campaign to this exurban community to probe for a soft spot in the armor of his opponent, Democrat Maura Healey.
Perhaps best known for the prison it houses — and the Shaker village it once did — Shirley is among those communities left reeling after the nearby Nashoba Valley Medical Center shuttered amid the collapse of Steward Health Care. Its closure left a yawning gap in medical care, residents say, and, for Healey’s challenger, a potential rich vein of frustration to tap in a part of the state more purple than solid blue.
Steward’s collapse indeed left many people to share the blame, including its former chief executive. Tucked inside this town’s American Legion hall on a recent Friday, Minogue naturally pointed his finger toward another. “And that person,” he said, “is [then] Attorney General Maura Healey.”
The hundred or so people who showed up liked what he had to say. The question, of course, is whether the other 5.1 million voters in Massachusetts do, too.
Roughly a week before voters decide the Massachusetts governor’s race, the two candidates were locked in a classic battle — the underdog Minogue attacking Healey, and the governor trying to look past him.
Minogue has tried to campaign on what he termed Healey’s “failed” record, reflecting polling that shows widespread dissatisfaction with the state of living in Massachusetts. Healey has stayed true to her own strategy, making the race a referendum on President Trump, the head of Minogue’s political party.
“People are still struggling out there. President Trump and the tariffs and the [Iran] war continue to drive up costs across the board,” Healey said Friday at an event in Roxbury organized by her state office.
Be it on the trail or in front of a State House news conference, Healey brings up Trump, federal funding cuts, and his administration’s aggressive immigration deportation campaign on a near-constant basis. Healey’s message has remained focused, regardless of the venue: connecting residents’ problems to the president and his party — and connecting Minogue to Trump.
But even as poll after poll has shown Healey gliding to reelection, some are still weighing their options.
After listening to Healey at a bakery in Newton Saturday morning — and leaving wearing her campaign button and carrying a Healey-branded tote bag — Mike Dunham, a 70-year-old self-described independent from Holliston, said he was still on the fence about whether to vote for Healey or Minogue.
Dunham was disappointed Beacon Hill lawmakers rejected Healey’s proposal to temporarily suspend the state’s 24-cent-a-gallon gas tax amid surging prices at the pump and was worried about the rising cost of living.
“I think Minogue’s run a good campaign. I think he’s really hit a lot of good issues,” Dunham told the Globe. “If it wasn’t the Donald Trump factor, he might be a little better off. But I think a lot of people are voting anti-Republican just because they’re pissed off at Trump.”
At the Newton bakery, Healey told a small group of voters huddled over coffee and pastries that Trump and his federal administration are “looking to take away all sorts of rights and freedoms.”
“I’m going to continue to put us in a position where we’re addressing and responding to needs that are created by outside forces, and specifically Donald Trump and the federal administration, but also moving us forward on the things that we know we need to do here: continuing to invest in clean energy, in wind, in solar, in geothermal, continuing to build housing,” she said.
Talking Trump is a game plan Healey’s top campaign advisers believe resonates with voters in a state where the president is wildly unpopular and, for other Republicans tied to him, even disqualifying. More than 42 percent of voters surveyed in a Suffolk/Globe poll said a Republican candidate with a history of backing Trump would be a non-starter for them.
“The problem for almost any Republican running this year is you do need the Trump faithful, small as they might be in Massachusetts, to come out and support you,” said Jon McHenry, a Republican pollster. “You can’t separate yourself too much from the president, but obviously the Democrats aren’t going to let you have a free run at that.”
Later Saturday morning outside Somerville City Hall, Healey sought to pump up supporters preparing to door-knock for her campaign.
“My opponent is ... somebody who’s a big-time supporter of Trump and [Vice President JD] Vance. He’s anti-choice. He’s pro-ICE, and he believes that the best thing we can do for public education is to give vouchers away,” she said. “In a time where Donald Trump is going to be president for two more years, who your governor is ... really, really matters.”
Cathy Borgesen, a 55-year-old from Newton who works at MIT, said Healey’s efforts to keep funding flowing to the life sciences sector are “incredibly important” because Trump is “gutting” federal grants.
“I’m not going to vote for somebody that’s spineless,” Borgesen said as she left the bakery in Newton.
For Minogue, the trail and the message look different.
The first-time candidate has eschewed traditional hallmarks of a gubernatorial campaign. He’s seldom released endorsements, avoided taking journalists’ questions after debates, and, unlike many of his Republican predecessors, didn’t pick a running mate early on this election cycle.
But voters in the Republican primary rejected his choice, nominating for lieutenant instead Shawn Oliver, who ended his campaign last week after being arrested for drunken driving. However, Oliver’s name is still on the ballot next to Minogue’s, leaving Minogue doing all that he can to distance himself from him.
Trump, too, is at a relative distance. Despite the president’s name often being on Healey’s lips, Trump has not endorsed in the race, or, it appears, weighed in publicly on his one-time donor’s challenge against one of his long-time antagonists.
Minogue, instead, leans into his business background with voters, touts the benefits of a federal scholarship tax credit he’s made a plank of his campaign, and promises to reduce violent crime. His appearance in Shirley was designed to highlight the problems with Steward, which was hobbled by alleged fraud and mismanagement, but, a Globe investigation found, also enabled by years of lax state scrutiny. (Healey has blamed Steward’s collapse squarely on its former CEO, Ralph de la Torre.)
And, to hear Minogue tell it, even as the Republican nominee, he shouldn’t be defined by his party. He was enrolled as an independent for nearly 20 years, he notes. It’s not party labels that should matter either, he says; indeed, two-thirds of Massachusetts voters aren’t even members of a party.
What counts is the economy.
“The jobs are leaving. So it’s only going to get worse, right?” he told voters in Shirley. “We have to stop the bleeding, and we have to go find the ability to keep jobs here.”
Joseph Spencer, a 65-year-old from Shirley who attended the event, said he plans to vote for Minogue because of his promises to cut red tape.
“He’s open-minded about all the regulations,” Spencer said. “There’s too many of them in the state. It’s hampering us, and he’s open to changing many of those.”
Healey has tried to carefully present herself as a policy pragmatist, largely avoiding the intraparty factional squabbles dogging Democrats in other places.
She has defended her efforts to save residents and rate-payers money, including supporting getting more natural gas into the state. And she’s only lightly embraced taglines of the left, such as Medicare For All, in favor of speaking more broadly about affordability.
“We are in a change election nationally,” said Jane Rayburn, a Democratic pollster not working for Healey. “But that is not necessarily what we are seeing here on the ground in Massachusetts.”
Chris Van Buskirk can be reached at chris.vanb@globe.com. Follow him on X @byChrisVan Anjali Huynh can be reached at anjali.huynh@globe.com.