Massachusetts Governor Race: Who Will Win in 2026

Massachusetts primary voters largely stuck with incumbents while setting up several marquee fall races. Republican Mike Minogue, the former Abiomed executive who self-funded his campaign with roughly $15 million, defeated Brian Shortsleeve by a wide margin to earn the right to challenge Gov. Maura Healey, who ran unopposed. In the U.S. Senate primary, Ed Markey beat back a challenge from Rep. Seth Moulton by a nearly two-to-one margin, adding Moulton to a list of younger rivals, including former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, that Markey has turned aside in recent cycles.

Dan Koh won the crowded Democratic primary for Moulton's open House seat after a previous unsuccessful bid in 2018. All five incumbent U.S. House members facing primary challengers won, though Rep. Richard Neal saw an unexpectedly close race against a first-time candidate. The Norfolk County district attorney's race remains uncalled, with Djuna Elizabeth Perkins holding a narrow lead. On Beacon Hill, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu backed challengers against two state senators who had opposed her property tax proposal.

Massachusetts voters headed to the polls Tuesday for state primary elections, with polling locations open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Statewide officeholders including Gov. Maura Healey, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and Attorney General Andrea Campbell face no primary opposition ahead of their fall reelection bids, but Republicans chose between Mike Minogue and Brian Shortsleeve in a contested gubernatorial primary.

The marquee race is Rep. Seth Moulton's challenge to longtime Sen. Ed Markey, with Markey's age, 80, a central theme of the campaign. Two other Democratic incumbents, Reps. Jake Auchincloss and Bill Keating, faced primary challengers Jason Poulos and Craig Swallow, respectively, in districts covering parts of Bristol County and Southeastern Massachusetts. Several state legislative seats in Bristol County also drew contested primaries. Results were expected after polls closed Tuesday evening.

With under three weeks before Massachusetts voters head to the polls, the arrest and mounting legal troubles of former Gov. Maura Healey aide Lamar Cook have become a flashpoint in the gubernatorial race. Cook, previously arrested on drug and firearms charges, now faces new federal charges over alleged SNAP fraud; a Hampden Superior Court judge also revoked his bail for 90 days in the pending state case. Republican candidate Mike Minogue pointed to the episode as evidence of Healey's lack of accountability, criticizing her for faulting police over Cook's background check. Healey said she regrets hiring Cook but fired him immediately upon learning of his arrest. Cook returns to court Oct. 26.

Abortion policy continues to fracture along state lines three years after Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade. In Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act, removing restrictions on abortion after 24 weeks and drawing criticism over the state's parallel campaign against pregnancy resource centers, which has spurred defamation and free-speech lawsuits. In Missouri, voters will decide in November on Amendment 3, a compromise measure that would restore limits on abortion after 12 weeks while allowing exceptions for rape, incest, and medical emergencies, and would also bar gender transition procedures for minors. And in Columbus, Ohio, reproductive rights advocates are pressing the city council to remove Flock automated license plate readers, warning the cameras could help states with abortion bans track and prosecute out-of-state patients, despite police assurances that reproductive-care searches are filtered.

Together, the disputes illustrate how abortion access, surveillance, and parental-consent questions remain contested even in states that have moved to protect or restrict the procedure, with litigation and ballot measures likely to shape enforcement for years.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Maycon Souto Dos Reis, a 54-year-old Brazilian national, on Aug. 3 in Westborough, Massachusetts. Dos Reis was convicted of aggravated murder in Brazil in September 2024 and sentenced to more than 14 years in prison before fleeing the country and crossing into the United States illegally in June 2024, when he was apprehended and released under the Biden administration. He first drew ICE's attention after a May arrest for unlicensed driving in Southborough, and was later taken into custody during a targeted operation at Westborough District Court.

The arrest came two days before Gov. Maura Healey signed the PROTECT Act, which bars ICE from operating in Massachusetts courthouses, schools, childcare centers, and health care facilities, bans new 287(g) agreements, and adds legal protections for immigrant parents. ICE officials cited the case as evidence that some undocumented immigrants without U.S. criminal records have serious offenses abroad. Dos Reis remains in ICE custody pending deportation proceedings, as tensions between federal immigration authorities and Massachusetts officials continue.

The trial of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother accused of strangling her three children — Cora, Dawson, and Callan — has drawn national attention to the state's distinctive insanity defense standard. Unlike most jurisdictions, Massachusetts places the burden of proof on prosecutors, who must show beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant both understood right from wrong and could control her actions. Clancy's defense has centered on claims of postpartum psychosis and inadequate mental health treatment leading up to the killings.

The case has become a flashpoint in broader debates over abortion policy, mental health law, and criminal accountability in Massachusetts, following Governor Maura Healey's signing of legislation expanding abortion access. Commentators have drawn comparisons to a similar case in Illinois, where a woman allegedly killed her two-year-old child using the same method, but under a less demanding legal standard for proving insanity. The outcome of the Clancy trial is expected to test how the commonwealth's unusual evidentiary threshold functions in a high-profile child homicide case, with implications for future legal proceedings involving mental illness defenses.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is facing calls from Catholic advocacy groups to be excommunicated after signing the "Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act" (H. 5595) on Aug. 10. The law removes the state's previous 24-week limit on abortion, allowing the procedure throughout pregnancy at a physician's discretion. Massachusetts joins Alaska, Vermont, Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., in permitting abortion until birth. State data show 99 abortions at 24 weeks or later in 2024, up from 84 in 2023.

Healey, who identifies as Catholic, drew backlash after publicly celebrating the signing. LifeSite's petition urging Boston Archbishop Richard Henning to excommunicate her has surpassed 25,000 signatures, and CatholicVote's Kelsey Reinhardt sent bishops a formal letter demanding accountability. The Archdiocese has called the law "gravely immoral" but has not announced any canonical action. Nine House Democrats, including Rep. Jeffrey Turco, broke ranks to oppose the bill, calling it "extremist" and "barbaric," while Healey's office defended her as "a governor for all people of all faiths."

Governor Maura Healey's administration is facing questions over a roughly $2 billion plan to replace Springfield's Roderick L. Ireland Courthouse with a new "regional justice center" built and owned by private developers under a 40-year lease, with two optional 10-year extensions. Under the arrangement, the state would not own the building for up to 60 years, if ever, though Healey says ownership terms are still being negotiated. Critics, including Republican gubernatorial challenger Mike Minogue and Pioneer Institute researcher Jeffrey Calabrese, question why the state would be responsible for major capital repairs in the lease's second half without gaining eventual title to the property. Healey defends the deal as the best value for taxpayers, citing the state's constrained capital budget and developer financing advantages, and dismisses criticism as political attacks and a "PR smear campaign." The bid award has also drawn controversy over developers' political ties and a pending amended legal complaint from losing bidders, which Healey predicts will be dismissed.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act on August 10, 2026, eliminating the state's prior 24-week framework for abortion, which had limited later-term procedures to cases involving the mother's life or severe fetal conditions. The new law replaces that standard with a physician's "professional judgment," with no medical review process able to override that determination, effectively removing a defined gestational limit.

Massachusetts joins a small number of states and the District of Columbia that have dropped objective post-viability restrictions since the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and returned abortion policy to the states. The change has drawn criticism from anti-abortion advocates who argue it authorizes the termination of viable pregnancies without meaningful oversight, while supporters frame it as expanding patient access to care. The law adds to the patchwork of state abortion policies that has emerged post-Dobbs, intensifying debate over whether Congress should establish uniform national standards rather than leaving the issue to vary by state.

Suffolk County Sheriff Steven W. Tompkins was found not guilty this week by a federal jury on extortion charges related to a stock deal with marijuana company Ascend Wellness Holdings. Prosecutors alleged Tompkins used his office to pressure Ascend cofounder Frank Perullo into giving him a pre-IPO stock purchase in 2020, while the sheriff's department maintained a reentry-program partnership with the firm. When the stock lost value in 2022, Tompkins recovered his roughly $50,000 investment through checks from Perullo. Tompkins denied wrongdoing after the verdict.

Critics, including the Boston Globe editorial board, argue the acquittal doesn't resolve ethical concerns about accepting a special financial arrangement from a business partner of his office, and are calling for scrutiny from the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission or pressure from Governor Maura Healey. Tompkins has faced past ethics fines, including for nepotism involving a niece's hiring and misuse of staff. His department has also seen recent scandals, including staff arrests and an inmate death ruled a homicide, intensifying calls for leadership changes at the Suffolk County House of Correction and Nashua Street Jail.