Healey, Minogue spar over spending, political ties in first Massachusetts governor debate
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ-TV, CBS News or Skydance.
Remember Lloyd Bridges as Steve McCroskey, the hapless head of air traffic control in the 1980 disaster/comedy "Airplane"? As the comic crises he's dealing with mount, McCroskey is seen resuming all his vices, including smoking, drinking and sniffing glue. Each time, he justifies his backsliding by declaring: "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit."
If Thursday night's first of two gubernatorial TV debates between incumbent Maura Healey and challenger Mike Minogue is any indication, it looks like Minogue picked the wrong year to run for governor of Massachusetts.
On paper, Minogue looks like a promising candidate, a successful medical device manufacturer with a stellar military background willing to spend unprecedented sums of his personal fortune. And during the debate on WBZ, as in his relentless TV ad campaign, he hammered Healey for her role in the state's affordability crisis. "We are last in Massachusetts, so you own that," he said. "We are last in jobs, most expensive healthcare, electricity, education, childcare. That's been the result of your four years."
Minogue's emphasis on what he terms the reckless overspending, overtaxation, overregulation and cronyism of a one-party state government is the same litany that carried the likes of Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci, Mitt Romney and Charlie Baker to a three-decade run of success at the gubernatorial level interrupted only by Deval Patrick's two terms.
But President Trump's historically unpopular presidency, featuring a barrage of assaults on the Massachusetts "eds and meds" economy, has made it hard so far for Minogue to get the usual traction those issues provided.
And Healey spent the debate doing her best to make it harder, name-checking Mr. Trump at least 37 times by our count. "The best thing Mike Minogue could do to lower costs in this state is to call his friend Donald Trump or J.D. Vance who he supported and helped elect, who he gave a million dollars to, and say, 'end this war, cut it out with the tariffs,'" was a typical Healey attack line.
It wasn't exactly a secret that this would be the thrust of the Healey campaign. But after recently turning heel and run-walking away from a Democratic Party tracker's questions about his Trump support, Minogue seemed no more prepared to slip the punch Thursday night, complaining that Healey was "name-calling me," and declaring that "it really doesn't matter who the president is."
If so, Healey's 20-point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling averages should melt away as the autumn tax and energy bills pour in. If not?
Maybe Minogue just picked the wrong year and wrong place to launch his political career.
