As he headed into a campaign stop in Middleton this week, Mike Minogue offered an upbeat assessment of the governor’s race.
“I feel very confident that people are paying attention now,” the GOP nominee said before touring a family-run business, Salem Metal.
“People know we’re going down the wrong path, and they know everything costs too much, and the one-party system is not responding to their needs,” he added.
A few months ago, it would have been easy to dismiss Minogue’s words as campaign bluster. Polling in the 2026 governor’s race has consistently shown Gov. Maura Healey leading Minogue by double digits, with margins that often exceed 20 percentage points.
That advantage has persisted despite Minogue’s massive personal wealth — he’s given roughly $17 million to his own campaign — and the charismatic confidence he shows on the trail.
Recently, though, it’s felt like something might be shifting. A new poll from the University of New Hampshire found Minogue gaining ground, cutting Healey’s lead to 16 percentage points. A super PAC backing Minogue’s candidacy announced that an internal poll showed Minogue and Healey running neck and neck among voters who’d seen, read or heard about the contest.
And, as the Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi put it, it looks like the governor is “running scared.” Healey copied Minogue’s proposal to suspend the state’s gas tax. And this week, the governor said she was signing an executive order to cut high energy costs as winter approaches, a focus of both her andMinogue’s campaigns.
Which raises the question: Does Massachusetts actually have a competitive race for governor on its hands?
Economic pessimism could set the stage for Republicans to have a real shot at the governor’s office, political observers said. But they’re not sure Minogue is the candidate who can pull off an upset, particularly given his conservative stance on abortion and support for President Donald Trump.
What’s the state of the race?
Tatishe Nteta, a political scientist at UMass Amherst and the head of the UMass Poll, said conditions are ripe for a challenger to make a serious bid to unseat Healey.
“What our polling shows is that ... Massachusetts residents have a more pessimistic outlook regarding the state of the state’s economy, the status of their own personal economic wellbeing, and of course the decline in confidence in the national economy,” Nteta said. “So generally, if elections are about perceptions about the health of the economy, then you would assume that the governor of the state in question would be in danger of potentially not being reelected.”
What’s more, Nteta added, the UMass Poll has found that more residents believe Massachusetts is on the wrong track than the right track.
“For many people in this state, they have their mind on their money and money on their mind,” Nteta said. “This is not about continuing the good times. This is a belief — a widespread belief — that we are in challenging economic times.”
Minogue himself believes he’s the person to fix those problems.
“We need an outsider to take on the political establishment,” he said in Middleton, touting his years as an Army infantry officer, head of the medical device company Abiomed, and chairman of the Michael and Renee Minogue Foundation, which takes a faith-based approach to charitable giving.
“I bring a skill set that is unique to these politicians,” he added. “And this is a time where we need somebody who can balance our budget, create jobs, and get rid of the waste, fraud and corruption. And that’s what I’ll do, because I’m not part of the system.”
Yet Nteta is skeptical that Minogue is positioned to take advantage of economic concerns — especially given his public ties to Trump.
“Healey has a pretty substantial lead over Minogue in our most recent poll in the end of July and early August, and other polling operations have shown a similar lead,” he said. “It might sort of reflect … the ways in which President Trump has come to define the Republican Party. And in a state as blue as Massachusetts, that is not a good identity to have as a candidate.
“If Mike Minogue is strategic, he’s going to move away from President Trump and try to embrace the mantle of more successful Republicans in this state like [former Gov.] Charlie Baker,” Nteta added.
Erin O’Brien, a political scientist at UMass Boston, is slightly more bullish on Minogue’s prospects.
“I think it’s more competitive than outsiders would believe,” O’Brien said. “I think it’s a real race.”
But she, too, sees a convincing pivot toward the moderate middle as key to Minogue’s chances.
“Not to say [Healey] can’t run away with it,” O’Brien said. “But … to the degree to which [Minogue] can tap into our taste for moderate Republicans in the gubernatorial, he has a shot.”
What’s dogging Minogue’s chances at the corner office?
If Minogue needs to cast himself as a Republican moderate to have a shot, though, his own political past may be his biggest challenge.
Massachusetts has a longstanding affinity for electing Republican governors to check the Democrat-dominated state Legislature. Baker, the most recent one of the bunch, enjoyed stellar approval ratings — partly because he kept Trump at arm’s length. In 2016 and 2020, Baker said he didn’t vote for Trump, and he sharply criticized the president for refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power before the 2020 election and for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
As Healey and the Massachusetts Democratic Party have been reminding voters for months, Minogue’s stance on Trump is very different. Minogue and his wife Renee hosted then-vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance for a Trump fundraiser in October 2024. He gave $100,000 to Trump’s campaign at the time, and has since given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump-controlled Republican National Committee.
Over the course of the campaign, Minogue has seemed uncertain about how to address his support for Trump. Last year he downplayed his loyalty to the GOP but quickly backtracked, saying: “I support President Trump and the Republican Party.”
Lately, though, Minogue seems to be trying harder to distance himself from Trump. He recently posted a photo of himself with Baker on social media along with an homage to Baker’s tenure as governor. In an interview with WCVB’s “On the Record,” he cited the trade war with Canada, cuts to National Institutes of Health funding in Massachusetts, and tariffs generally as specific areas where he disagrees with the president. And in a Boston Herald column, Minogue recounted backing several members of Massachusetts’ all-Democratic congressional delegationand said his “support in 2024” was driven by concerns about fentanyl and educational opportunity. Right now, Minogue added, “I am frustrated with Washington, D.C.”
In that Herald piece, though, Trump’s name went unmentioned. So did Minogue’s opposition to abortion, another area where he is running to the right of Baker.
During the Republican primary, Minogue’s then-rival Brian Shortsleeve warned that a pro-life Republican like Minogue couldn’t win statewide in Massachusetts, and the issue has occasionally seemed awkward for Minogue to deal with. In a recent appearance on GBH’s Boston Public Radio, for example, Minogue repeatedly said would “follow the law” when it comes to abortion. He refused to say, however, if he’d back a proposed ballot question repealing a new state law that allows abortions after 24 weeks, calling that question “politics.”
What’s the recipe for success?
Doug Rubin, a Democratic political consultant who helped former Gov. Deval Patrick win two terms, argues that Minogue’s attempts to shift to the center will fall short unless the GOP nominee acts more decisively to reassure voters who are anti-Trump and pro-choice.
“He’s doing a lot of things on issues that I think are actually majority issues, where his position is consistent with where the majority of voters are,” Rubin said. “But … Governor Healey and her campaign have done a really good job of just hammering those two issues and he has not done a good job at all of trying to address those in any comprehensive way.
“He’s been nibbling around the edges,” Rubin added, referencing Trump and abortion. “And I think on those two issues, as important as they are to voters in Massachusetts, he just has not done a good job of addressing them at all. And I think until he does there’s no way he can move to the middle or become more of a Charlie Baker [Republican].”
But Republican strategist Wendy Wakeman argues that it’s Healey who needs to define herself more effectively between now and Election Day.
“The only game the Democrats have right now is saying, ‘Donald Trump is bad and [Minogue] is Donald Trump,’” Wakeman said. “And they say it over and over again.
“There comes a point where the Healey campaign is going to have to break with that message, and prove that she is more than just not Donald Trump — she’s doing good things for Massachusetts,” Wakeman added. “And I think we’re starting to reach that point.”
Ultimately, though, the question of whether Minogue needs to tack further to the center may be moot — because he seems to have gone as far as he’s willing to go.
Asked in Middleton if there are any misconceptions about his candidacy, for example, Minogue told GBH News: “The issue that most people need to understand is I am not a politician, and I was an independent for 19 years. ... I do not identify with a party. I swore an oath to the Constitution at West Point, and I’m an American.”
Shortly after, asked what voters should know about his stance on abortion, Minogue reiterated that he would uphold the law as governor, but added: “I am allowed to have my own personal belief based on my faith, and based on being in healthcare for 30 years, and I think people also should have that opportunity too.”
His focus, it seemed, was on asserting his right to hew to his own strong convictions, without recognizing that equally strong convictions exist on the other side of the issue as well.
If Minogue does decide to tack further to the middle, he’ll have to move quickly. Election Day is less than a month away. And the most recent survey on the race, from the MassINC Polling Group and CommonWealth Beacon, showed Healey with a 22-point lead.
Minogue’s support was just 32% — about what Trump himself received in Massachusetts in 2020. A result like that would be a huge disappointment for Minogue and the Massachusetts GOP, and call into question the party’s ability to win the governorship until the Trump era draws to a close.
