Election Day political losses mount for Mass. Gov. Maura Healey after allies defeated

Gov. Maura Healey was not on the ballot on Election Day but she still lost on multiple fronts.

The two candidates she campaigned hard for — Joyce Craig in New Hampshire and Kamala Harris for the White House — lost their elections and one of the ballot questions she opposed, nixing the MCAS graduation requirement, marched on to victory despite her efforts.

The first-term Democratic governor said she does not regret her work beyond the Bay State’s borders even after spending many days on the road in the Granite State lobbying for Craig and taking to the airwaves countless times to defend Harris.

At a press conference just outside her State House office, Healey said “no” when asked if she thought she should have spent more time campaigning inside Massachusetts for local issues.

“We knew New Hampshire was going to be close. The reason I was in New Hampshire is because my mom and dad still live there. I grew up there. I played sports there, went to school there, worked there,” she said. “I care a lot about that state. We have a very close relationship, I mean, literally, as border states.”

Healey’s out-of-state advocacy drew the ire of Republicans in Massachusetts, including from MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale, who said the governor had little to show after a “campaign season marked by political blunders and missed opportunities for real change.”

Carnevale knocked Healey over the MCAS ballot question, which found the Democratic governor and local Republicans in the same camp opposing the measure.

“In the critical final days of the election cycle, she was conspicuously absent from the conversation, leaving students and parents without a strong advocate,” Carnevale said in a statement.

But Healey did strike wins in her opposition to a ballot question that would have raised the subminimum wage for tipped workers and in some local legislative races where she endorsed Democratic candidates.

Jerold Duquette, a Central Connecticut State University political science professor who writes for the MassPoliticsProfs blog, said Healey’s losses on Election Day are not likely to have any significant impact on her governorship or political clout.

He said it would have been “absurd” for her not to have stumped for Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

“Neither of these are the kind of things that you think, ‘oh my God, this is a signal that she’s weaker than we thought. I don’t really think that that makes a lot of sense,’” he told the Herald. “I don’t think a lot of Massachusetts voters are going to sort of look askance at something that happened in New Hampshire in terms of the governor’s profile.”

Healey spent Friday in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state that ultimately voted for former President Donald Trump, campaigning for Harris, including at two separate get-out-the-vote rallies for LGBTQ voters in Allentown and Philadelphia.

The governor then traveled to New Hampshire Monday to pitch voters on both Harris and Craig, including at events in Exeter, Manchester, and Nashua.

Healey also spent Election Day in New Hampshire at events for Craig and Harris in Hampton Falls, North Hampton, Hampton, and Durham, according to a campaign spokesperson.

She was originally scheduled to appear at the Massachusetts Democratic Party election night event in Boston but did not show up.

Wendy Wakeman, a Republican strategist in New Hampshire, said Healey was the “big loser” of election night.

“She put all kinds of chips into the candidate who lost to Kelly Ayotte. She put a whole bunch of other chips into going around the country and working for Kamala Harris and she didn’t win anything,” Wakeman said.