Charlestown Resident Maura Healey Enters Attorney General Race

Saying she wants to make the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office "lead the nation as a top public law firm," Charlestown's Maura Healey threw her hat into the ring on Tuesday, Oct. 22 in the race to become Massachusetts Attorney General.

Healey is the first candidate to officially announce her intentions to replace gubernatorial candidate and Healey's current boss, Massachusetts Attorney General Maratha Coakley, as the state's chief legal officer. 

"I realize as a first-time candidate I have my work cut out for me, but I'm really looking forward to working really hard and getting out all across the state to talk to people about the role of the attorney general and to hear from them, their concerns and how we, together, can make Massachusetts a better place," Healey told the State House News Service.

She noted in the interview that her priorities as AG would be consumer protection, escalating health-care costs, and "protecting our environment while addressing our energy costs and energy needs."

Healey was until last week the AG's office's chief of the business and labor bureau and the public protection and advocacy bureau. She resigned to focus on her candidacy. 

Growing up in New Hampshire, Healey attended Harvard College where she was a basketball standout – she played two years professionally in Europe after graduating – then attended Northeastern University Law.

She worked as a prosecutor in the Middlesex District Attorney's Office and for the upscale Boston law firm of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr.

Healey is well known for her advocacy of gay and lesbian issues, highlighted by her successful arguments against the Defense of Marriage Act, which denied same-sex spouses in Massachusetts access to federal marriage benefits, before the U.S. District Court in Boston and a federal appeals court. 

She lives with her partner, Massachusetts Appeals Court Judge Gabrielle Wolohojia, in the neighborhood.

Healey will be joined in the race by state Rep. Harold Naughton from Clinton in the Democratic primary with an announcement today, Thursday, Oct. 24.  

Also expected to join the race is current Middlesex Sheriff Peter Koutoujian, who earlier this month finished second in the special Democratic primary for the 5th US Congressional district and who expressed interest in the position in the past.