Kerry Murphy Healey Gallery
commentary by Timothy Horrigan, July 10, 2006 & September 22, 2006 & November 2, 2006 & November 8, 2006 & December 4, 2007
Copyright © 2006 Timothy Horrigan

 December 4: 2007: No, Kerry Murphy Healy and Mitt Romney are not planning to get married. They are just good friends!

 I put this page up before the 2006 General Election campaign, where Kerry Murphy Healey ran a terrible campaign against Democrat Deval Patrick. She tried to soften him up with a series of negative ads sandwiched between layers of feel-good ads. However, the attack ads were fairly ridiculous: she tried to accuse him of being in favor of crime and illegal immigration. She even played the race card by playing on the stereotype of the white woman being stalked by a black man in an ad showing a woman hurrying through a parking garage while an ominous off-screen voice made vicious innuendos about Patrick. The feel-good ads touted her "50 Smart, Tough Solutions" which is at least 40 more bullet points than any sane person could possibly bother to care about at one time. (However I will say that she did remember to include such hot-button issues as not letting illegal immigrants have drivers' licenses.) You can (as of November 2, 2006) see her TV ads, including at least some of the attack ads, on her campaign web site:

• http://www.healeycommittee.com/tvads.html

(November 2, 2006)

She lost to Deval Patrick by a margin of roughly 56%-35% (with 9% going to two third-party candidates), winning a plurality in only 66 of the state's 351 towns and cities in the state, and a outright majority in only 8 of those cities and towns. She didn't even win her hometown of Beverly. Yep,it turned out to be a lousy campaign.

• Town by Town voting results (from Boston.com)

(November 8, 2006)

She was born in April 30, 1960, so she's 46 years old and a Taurus (which is an appropriate sign for a politician.) She is of Boston-Irish ancestry but grew up in Florida and only moved to Massachusetts to attend Harvard. She always makes a point of saying she worked three jobs while at Harvard.  After getting a Ph.D. in law and political science at Trinity College in Dublin, she worked for a management and policy consulting firm, Abt Associates.  

She was a controversial choice for Lieutenant Governor, since no one really knew who she was.  Even though Mitt Romney was running unopposed for Governor, former GOP chairman Jim Rappaport ran against her.  She beat him by 65%-35%.

I am just putting up this page because I think she's one of the best-looking women in politics.  Since I am a liberal Democrat, I wouldn't vote for her, unless she switched parties and changed her views.  And in any case, I live in New Hampshire rather than Massachusetts. But she's still a cutie. 

She is generally liberal only by the standards of the Republican party, although she has occasionally expressed some surprisingly sensible views on issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc. in the past— though not necessarily in the present. (Family law and criminology happen to have been her areas of expertise during her years as a consultant.)

The pictures don't do her justice.  I happened to see her in person a couple of years ago at a pub across the street from the Boston Garden when I was in town for the Hockey East finals, and she was having dinner with some man who I barely even noticed.  (It was probably her husband.)  She had a rather tight-fitting raspberry-colored cashmere sweater on, and she was just stunning.  Stunning, I tell ya, stunning!  I knew I had seen her somewhere before, but it took me a while to realize where I had seen her.

She should wear red more often!

Kerry Murphy Healey at the entrance to the Governor's Office on the second floor of the Massachusetts state house.  She currently works on the third floor.  She usually poses with her right side facing the camera, but as you can see there's nothing wrong with her left side.

Kerry Murphy Healey and her cheerful but mysterious husband Sean M. Healey.  Very little is known about him, except he's absurdly rich and they met at Harvard.  He is the CEO of an even more mysterious company, "AMG" (or the "Affiliated Managers Group.")

• April 10, 2006 Boston Globe article about the Healeys

Lt. Gov. Healey clapping hands while standing next to Gov. Mitt Romney, who is about to continue a family tradition by running unsuccessfully for President.

Kerry Murphy Healey making her way to the podium for a speech. She often wears earth tone pantsuits with retro polyester blouses. Not the ideal look, but she pulls it off.  (When you have the body of a supermodel, you can pull just about any look off.)

Kerry Murphy Healey shaking hands with some guy and accepting (or perhaps presenting) a lucite tchotchke with the Massachusetts state seal on it.  The assorted baked goods in the background presumably have some special significance.

Kerry Murphy Healey making one of her favorite gestures.  I would make that gesture a lot myself if I was her.

Some of Dr. Healey's supporters at a local 4th of July parade.

Her first 2 TV commercials:

She began her air campaign the third week in July with two commercials, neither of which mention the fact that she is a Republican:

"Values" is a typical positive non-attack ad. It has soothing background music, montages of old family photos, and handheld camera shots of her shaking hands with voters. It makes the point that, in stark contrast to her unnamed opponents, she has a family and frequently goes around shaking hands with voters. The ad takes a few of its 30 seconds to emphasize that her father was a World War II veteran who was "severely disabled by a heart attack." The heart attack happened decades after the war— but this reference does connect her fight on a deeply personal level to the fight of the Greatest Generation.

"The Big Squeeze" has an actual policy proposal: she wants to suspend the gas tax (for three months, I think she said.) This seems like a slightly foolish idea when we're running out of gas, when carbon dioxide emissions are causing catastrophic global warming, and when we are fighting an incredibly expensive war to keep the Middle East's oil fields in the hands of pro-American rather than anti-American dictators. (And let's not even get into the fact that her state just started spending millions of dollars on repairing problems with the Big Dig.) But it's still an idea. She also alludes to one of her favorite topics: combining the various government employees' pension plans into one statewide system. She claims this will save the taxpayers millions.

• WBZ-TV CBS 4's Jon Keller gave an amusing commentary on this ad on July 18, 2006.

For more info:

• The Healey Committee

• The Office of the Lieutenant Governor

• Anyone But Jeb!

 The 2006 General Election

The 2006 governor's race will be a historically significant one regardless of who wins. Healey would be the first elected woman governor of Massachusetts. (Jane Swift was the governor briefly in 2001 and 2002, but she was a Lieutenant Governor who took over as Acting Governor.) More dramatically, her Democratic opponent, Deval Patrick would be the Bay State's first African-American governor. Their demographic characteristics aside, Healey and Patrick are fairly conventional and fairly similar people: both are very wealthy, both have law degrees, and both have centerist views. And, although Healey probably hates to admit this, they both worked for the Clinton Administration during the 1990s. (He was an Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and she was a consultant for Abt Associates who worked mostly on Department of Justice contracts.)

She opened the general election campaign with a list of 50 so-called "ideas", many of which were racially charged. She opted to make illegal immigration the focus of many of those ideas, and other ideas were also about welfare and inner city schools. The chairperson of the Maaschusetts Democratic Party, Phil Johnston pointed out that these ideas were indeed racially charged. He said: "It comes perilously close to race baiting, and I hope she will think twice about it and back off. What she is doing comes straight form the Republican playbook since Richard Nixon right through Karl Rove. She should focus on the real issues facing the people of this state, like healthcare, education, and housing."

Healey made a show of being offended by the fact that the "race card" was being played and said that Patrick should call for Johnston's resignation. Patrick refused to do so, but Johnston did back off from his remarks.

(September 22, 2006)

See Also:

• September 22, 2006 Boston Globe story about "race-baiting" furore

• Healey's 50 Ideas

• Healey campaign site

• Patrick campaign site

The Forgotten Liars