EMILYs List Congratulates Maura Healey on Her Election as Governor of Massachusetts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 8, 2022

EMILYs List Congratulates Maura Healey on Her Election as Governor of Massachusetts

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, congratulates Maura Healey on her election as governor of Massachusetts. EMILYs List President Laphonza Butler released the following statement: 
 
“With her election as governor of Massachusetts today, Maura Healey has made history for the LGBTQ+ community, becoming the first openly lesbian governor in the country. Healey’s grit and determination over the course of her career will make her a formidable governor, and her commitment to justice will ensure that residents of Massachusetts have a champion in the governor’s office who will fight for reproductive freedom, gender equity, and accessible health care. EMILYs List is thrilled to congratulate Healey on her historic victory, and we know that her leadership in Massachusetts will change lives and futures for the better.”
 
Attorney General Maura Healey is a civil rights lawyer and proven leader with an outstanding history of public service. Healey grew up in New Hampshire, the oldest of five and raised by a strong mom who was a school nurse. She graduated from Harvard College, where she captained the basketball team, and played professional basketball in Europe. She later attended Northeastern University School of Law, and has spent the last 15 years of her career working for the people of Massachusetts. She has served as chief of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Civil Rights Division, where she led the country’s first successful state challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, changing the landscape for LGBTQ+ rights across the country. She also spearheaded efforts in Massachusetts to protect abortion clinic staff and patients, including investigating fake health clinics, defending the Massachusetts buffer zone law, helping providers secure confidential license plates, and seeking injunctions against individuals that threatened clinic staff.
 
In 2015, Healey was sworn in as Massachusetts attorney general, becoming the first openly LGBTQ+ attorney general in the United States. As attorney general, Healey challenged unconstitutional abortion restrictions across the country and took on the Trump administration for its attacks on birth control access, Title X, and abortion via telehealth. She was an early and strong supporter of the ACCESS Act, which expanded access to contraception, and the ROE Act, which removed several anti-abortion restrictions from Massachusetts law in 2020. While she was co-chair of the Democratic Attorneys General Association, it became the first and only Democratic campaign committee to require candidates to publicly state their support for abortion rights in order to receive endorsements. She implemented an extensive paid parental leave policy and created some of the strongest equal pay regulations in the country. Throughout her career, she has been a staunch advocate of gender equality, racial justice, and civil and reproductive rights. Healey and Kim Driscoll comprise the first all-woman gubernatorial leadership team in American history.

EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, works to elect Democratic pro-choice women up and down the ballot and across the country with a goal of fighting for our rights and our communities. Our work is centered around a fundamental vision: Run. Win. Change the World. EMILYs List has raised over $700 million in service to that vision and has helped Democratic women win competitive elections by recruiting and training candidates, supporting and helping build strong campaigns, researching the issues that impact women and families, running one of the largest independent expenditure campaigns for Democrats, and turning out women voters to the polls. Since our founding in 1985, we have helped elect the country's first woman as vice president, 159 women to the House, 26 to the Senate, 16 governors, and nearly 1,400 women to state and local office. More than 40% of the candidates EMILYs List has helped elect to Congress have been women of color. Visit www.emilyslist.org for more information.