What the scrap over Mass. Gov. Healey's Sunday show quips explain about our politics

Yahoo

5 days ago

If you're the sort of person who watches the Sunday political chat shows, then you might have caught Gov. Maura Healey engaging in a time-honored rite of campaign season last weekend: Burnishing her record as she seeks a second term.
And if you're not the sort of person who watches Sunday political chat shows because, say, you were at church or busy packing the car for the beach, then here's a quick object lesson on the perils and pitfalls of being an incumbent with a record.
It starts with an extended consideration of what Healey said when WBZ-TV's Jon Keller teed her up with a question last Sunday about the administration of former Republican Gov. Charlie Baker.
Important context: Healey has been generally deferential to her predecessor. But Mike Kenneally and Brian Shortsleeve, who are now vying for the 2026 Republican gubernatorial nomination, are former Baker aides.
Healey did what most practiced pols do when they're confronted with that kind of question: She flipped the script and turned it into an opportunity to talk about herself. The premise is that the last thing you want to do is give the competition free airtime.
Here's the full quote:
'I think what is important to the voters, for reelection, is what I've done,' she said. '[We] cut taxes — hadn't been done in 20 years. We're building more homes that should have been built before. We're building them out now at a scale because we've got a lower cost. [We're] fixing transportation for the first time, not even in recent memory.'
She continued: 'The T is running on time. No slow zones. We're going to continue to make investments. And we've made sure that Massachusetts is No. 1 in education. We're back atop the ratings this year, and I'm really pleased about that. There are challenges, driving down costs, particularly around housing and energy, [those are] top on my list. But I'm running for reelection, Jon, because I love Massachusetts.'
And now, why it matters:
You had to be paying attention, but Healey's comments were a barely veiled swipe at her two Republican rivals.
Keneally served as Baker's housing and economic development secretary, which means he was the guy who was supposed to fix the state's housing affordability and supply problem.
Shortsleeve was tasked with running the MBTA, and somehow wrestling an aging system, whose repair costs ran to the hundreds of millions of dollars, back into shape.
While progress has been made on the latter, it's pretty safe to say we're a long way from done on the former.
So it will not shock you to learn that Healey's remarks landed with a thud among Republicans.
By Monday afternoon, the state Republican Party had blasted out a lengthy fact-check — and a condemnation — of Healey's comments.
'Misrepresenting a broken record comes naturally to the Healey administration, that has nothing to run on heading into a reelection year,' state GOP Chairperson Amy Carnevale said.
'Voters are living in an opposite reality from the one Governor Healey spoke about Sunday, and they are too smart to believe that she's done anything to make their lives materially better since taking office,' Carnevale continued.
Republicans took specific issue with the Democratic governor's assertion that she was the 'first to come in and reform' the state's hugely expensive emergency shelter system.
'We've driven the numbers in shelter way down, we're driving the cost way down,' Healey told Keller. 'I'm actually the first to come in and reform that system, which needed reform.'
Healey has made some progress when it comes to reducing the number of people in state-run shelters. And most hotel shelters closed last month because there were fewer people in the system.
But the state still had spent nearly $830 million on the system through the end of June, with costs set to exceed $1 billion by the end of the 2024-25 budget year (which closed on June 30), MassLive previously reported.
Republicans pointed to similar progress that Baker had made in reducing the number of people in hotel shelters in 2017 and his efforts to keep people in their homes. That was before the state was rocked by a flood of migrant new arrivals, which filled the system to overflowing in 2023.
Similarly, Kennealy and Shortsleeve each will have to explain their role in helping to fix — or not — two of the state's biggest public policy challenges: housing and mass transportation.
That conversation will shape the campaign to come. And in separate interviews, both have tipped their hands on how they intend to address it.
Kennealy, through a spokesperson, defended his record on housing this week, arguing that new housing starts had increased on his watch and declined under Healey.
Speaking to MassLive in May, Kennealy offered further details.
'We got passed the single most important zoning reform in 50 years in Massachusetts. And that's called housing choice. And it took us three years to get it done,' he said.
'And we looked at local zoning as an impediment to housing production, and it was our view that we're in a housing crisis in Massachusetts,' he continued. 'We have to produce a lot more housing. But you've got to do it in partnership with cities and towns. You cannot mandate to them what to do. You've got to work with them.'
Shortsleeve similarly defended his stewardship of the MBTA, telling State House News Service in a June interview that 'we took out waste and abuse.'
'We streamlined parts of the organization, we rebid contracts, and when we were done, we had the lowest operating expenses in the history of the T,' he continued. 'That shows you what's possible in terms of reforming government when you bring a businessman sort of mindset, an outsider perspective, and a Marine's determination to the job.'
He went further, arguing that Healey 'has never delivered a balanced budget for the T. Today, the T takes a billion dollars more to run than it did six years ago, and the T's costs in almost every area have grown rapidly. What I've seen in the fast past few years is unrestrained cost growth.'
The $60.9 billion budget that Healey signed into law last week provides $470 million in direct support for the MBTA, as well as funding for reduced-price fares for those who qualify for them.
That is some not-insignificant cash.
Still, it's important to pause here to note that there are still some 18 months to go before Election Day 2026. In our hyper-accelerated timeline, that's several political lifetimes away.
But if campaigns and elections are about anything, they're about candidates taking control of their narratives and defining themselves before their opponents have a chance to do it for them.
Don't believe it?
Consider that all it takes is one misguided photo of a guy in a tank to help crater a White House campaign.
Narratives and records matter. And voters, who might need some occasional prodding, do remember it.
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