Attorney General elect Maura Healey at victory
party.
Charlestown’s Maura Healey was elected Attorney General Tuesday night, beating Republican challenger John Miller in the state election to become the country’s first openly gay Attorney General.
Charlestown came out huge for Healey, a Charlestown resident that served as Attorney General Martha Coakley’s top deputy.
In Charlestown, Healey received 4,792 votes to Miller’s 1,510 votes.
Statewide Healey ended the night with 62 percent to Miller’s 28 percent.
“I’m so humble and grateful to the voters across the state for turning out to elect me,” said Healey election night. “It’s a broad agenda and a big agenda. … As attorney general you don’t have the luxury to do just one thing at once. It’s important to build and maintain the top talent in the attorney general’s office so we’re able to protect the people of Massachusetts.”
She said she plans to hit the ground running and tackle issues like gun violence, prescription drug and heroin abuse, and civil rights issues.
In her time at the AG”s office, Healey lead two prominent divisions of the state’s chief law enforcement office, the Business & Labor and Public Protection & Advocacy Bureaus.
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 Attorney General’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, Healey 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.