Charlestown resident and Attorney General Martha Coakley’s top deputy Maura Healey announced her candidacy for Attorney General last Thursday. Healey will try and fill the AG spot as her boss runs for Massachusetts Governor.
Healey lead two prominent divisions of the state’s chief law enforcement office, the Business & Labor and Public Protection & Advocacy Bureaus.
“I realize as a first-time candidate I have my work cut out for me, but I’m really looking forward to working really hard and getting out all across the state to talk to people about the role of the attorney general and to hear from them, their concerns and how we, together, can make Massachusetts a better place,” Healey told the State House News Service.
Prior to that, since joining the AG’s office from the private sector in 2007, Healey was Chief of the Civil Rights Division.
Healey was the architect of the state’s landmark challenge to the wrong-headed Defense of Marriage Act and led the winning argument of the nation’s first lawsuit striking down the law that discriminated against same-sex married couples. She later filed briefs in the Supreme Court marriage equality cases that declared DOMA unconstitutional and overturned California’s marriage ban.
When the United States Supreme Court finally struck down the law in June, President Barack Obama joined Governor Deval Patrick, AG Coakley and others as hailing the case as a landmark in the fight for equal rights.
“The laws of our land are catching up to the fundamental truth that millions of Americans hold in our hearts: when all American are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free,” Obama said of the ruling, saying the nation is “better off for it.”
At the AG’s office Healey oversaw the areas of consumer protection, environmental protection, health care, insurance and financial services, antitrust, Medicaid fraud, energy and telecommunications, not-for-profits and charities, fair labor, and business, technology and economic development. She oversaw the AG’s efforts to assist military service members and veterans in partnership with state and local officials, and supervised and oversaw implementation of a first in the nation Home Corps program using funds obtained by AG Coakley in the national mortgage settlement with the nation’s five largest banks to assist borrowers and families facing foreclosure.
Prior to joining the AG’s Office, Maura worked at a leading international law firm in Boston as a business and securities litigator and focused her practice on the financial services, technology, biotechnology, and health care sectors. Maura also was a criminal prosecutor in the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office.
Maura lives in Charlestown with her partner.