EMILYs List Endorses Maura Healey for Massachusetts Governor

For Immediate Release
May 19, 2022 

EMILYs List Endorses Maura Healey for Massachusetts Governor

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, endorsed Maura Healey for election to serve as the governor of Massachusetts. Laphonza Butler, president of EMILYs List, released the following statement:
 
“During her years in political leadership in the state of Massachusetts, Attorney General Healey has demonstrated time and again that she is willing to fight to protect the rights of the people of Massachusetts. Healey was instrumental in fighting for marriage equality for LGBTQ+ couples, and she was a leading supporter of the ROE Act, which codified the right to abortion into Massachusetts law, ensuring that access will be protected in the state. Healey is the pro-choice leader that Massachusetts needs, and EMILYs List is thrilled to announce our support of her campaign to become the state’s next governor.”
 
Attorney General Maura Healey is a civil rights lawyer and proven leader running for governor of Massachusetts to continue her outstanding career 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.

EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, has raised over $700 million to elect Democratic pro-choice women candidates. With a grassroots community of over five million members, EMILY's List helps Democratic women win competitive campaigns – across the country and up and down the ballot – by recruiting and training candidates, supporting and helping build strong campaigns, researching the issues that impact women and families, running nearly $50 million in independent expenditures in the last cycle alone, and turning out women voters and voters of color 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 more than 1,300 women to state and local office. More than 40% of the candidates EMILYs List has helped elect to Congress have been women of color. After the 2016 election, more than 60,000 women reached out to EMILY's List about running for office laying the groundwork for the next decade of candidates for local, state, and national offices. In our effort to elect more women in offices across the country, we have created our Run to Win program, expanded our training program, including a Training Center online, and trained thousands of women.