Minogue wins GOP primary for Mass. governor, setting stage for matchup with Healey

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Mike Minogue, a wealthy former medical device company CEO who poured more than $15 million into his campaign, closed out a Republican gubernatorial primary race that had begun to feel more like a formality, decisively defeating Brian Shortsleeve, who served in top posts under Gov. Charlie Baker.

In unofficial results on Tuesday night, Minogue had 72% of the GOP primary vote to 28% for Shortsleeve.

Minogue will face Gov. Maura Healey, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary as she seeks a second four-year term.

Minogue rocketed to the top of the GOP contest after dominating the state party convention in April, winning support from 70% of the 1,800 delegates. That prompted an unsuccessful effort to pressure Shortsleeve, a former top MBTA official and venture capital investor, to drop out of the race after he narrowly cleared the 15% threshold necessary to secure a spot on the primary ballot.

Mike Kennealy, another former Baker aide, failed to qualify for the ballot and later threw his support behind Minogue.

Minogue will need to overcome heavy odds to unseat Healey, who starts the race widely favored to win reelection. In a poll released two weeks ago by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and WCVB, Healey led Minogue by a 53-33 margin.

Under Mass GOP chair Amy Carnevale, the party has moved to shed some of the die-hard MAGA cast it had under former state party chair Jim Lyons. But the party’s small base in deep-blue Massachusetts – it claims fewer than 8% of registered voters – remains solidly behind the president, and Minogue and Shortsleeve both said they voted for Trump in 2024. Minogue hosted a fundraiser for the Trump-Vance ticket with JD Vance as the featured guest.

With affordability a top voter concern here – and across the country — Minogue has hammered Healey as a tax-and-spend Democrat who has overseen unsustainable growth in the state budget while not doing enough to rein in high energy costs and other expenses straining the budgets of Massachusetts households.

A US Army veteran, Minogue started his career at General Electric HealthCare and went on to serve as president, CEO, and chairman at Abiomed, Inc., a Danvers-based medical device company. The Boston Globe reported that he made more than $240 million when the company was sold in 2022 to Johnson & Johnson.

The GOP nominee boasts a massive cash advantage, thanks to his largely self-funded campaign. Minogue has more than $8 million in cash on hand, compared with the $6.6 million for Healey and $527,000 for Shortsleeve, according to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance.

Minogue could open his wallet further for the general election. But it may be an uphill climb to translate that financial firepower – and his pro-life Republican message – into the votes it will take to topple an incumbent Democratic Massachusetts governor.

Shortsleeve argued that the party needed a nominee closer to the Baker mold to have a chance. “If Mike Minogue is our nominee, this election will be about Trump and abortion, and we will lose,” he told the Globe’s Shirley Leung.

But Shortsleeve quickly endorsed Minogue in a statement Tuesday night in which he conceded the primary race.

The Democratic Governors Association also released a statement calling Minogue a “MAGA puppet” who will bring Trump’s “dangerous, cost-raising agenda to Beacon Hill.”

Minogue tried to cast his convincing win as the first step in a campaign that will propel him to the corner office, saying in a victory speech that “it’s time for a new kind of governor.”

“Hard-working families are falling behind while the political establishment keeps taking care of itself,” he said. “They’ve built a system that spends more, taxes more, and asks working people to carry more, while their friends and insiders get the breaks. Tonight, we sent a message: those days are over.”