BOSTON (SHNS) – After speculation surfaced on a national TV show last weekend, Gov. Maura Healey resolutely denied having any interest in serving as attorney general under a potential future President Kamala Harris administration.
Healey has been actively promoting the Democratic nominee ahead of November’s election. She made her debut at the Democratic National Convention last month with a short speech about why a prosecutor — given Harris’s background as a state attorney general, a position Healey also held — made her fit for the job over her opponent, former Republican President Donald Trump.
Healey also made national news as one of the first prominent Democrats to publicly urge President Joe Biden to bow out of the 2024 race, and threw her weight behind Harris early on.
Given Healey’s profile as governor and her support of Harris and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s campaign, journalist Nancy Cordes asked Healey on CBS News’s “Face The Nation” last weekend about her future plans if the two Democrats are elected this November.
“You’re the former State Attorney General, and your name has been floated as a possible US Attorney General. If Vice President Harris is elected, is that a job that you’d be interested in?” Cordes asked.
Healey responded, “I love being governor of this state. I love what we’ve been able to do, free community college, better access to health care, making sure that we do things to move forward economically. I’m a pro-growth Democrat, as is Kamala Harris. We just cut taxes here in the state, which is also something that Kamala Harris wants to do — cut taxes for the middle class. Donald Trump only wants to raise taxes for the ultra wealthy. So I’m focused, Nancy, on doing everything I can to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in November. It will be good not just for Massachusetts, it will be good for America.”
Her answer raised eyebrows in Massachusetts from those who noticed that the governor did not say “no” to Cordes’s question.
So local reporters asked Healey about it this week.
After an event in Malden announcing the launch of a low-income half-price fare program for MBTA riders, a reporter asked Healey to again respond to the question of whether she would consider the attorney general post in a future Harris administration.
“No,” Healey quickly responded. “I love being governor.”
She continued, “I am very interested in making sure that Massachusetts has the best, best federal partner, and that’s why I am so strongly supporting and working for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to be elected. It matters a lot to the state. It matters to our future, and it matters a heck of a lot to this country. And so you’re going to continue to see me out there on the trail finding ways to support Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who are going to deliver for Massachusetts, deliver for families and deliver the kind of growth that we need and take the country in the direction that we need to go forward.”
Healey hasn’t said if she plans to seek reelection in 2026.
Asked in early August about whether she intended to seek a second term , Healey turned to another topic, saying she she had shifted the focus of her political energy onto the 2024 presidential election.
“In terms of elections, the only election I’m thinking about is November and defeating Donald Trump,” she said.
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