Former medical device executive Mike Minogue won Tuesday’s Republican primary for governor, according to an Associated Press race call. The AP called the race quickly at 8:45pm EST.
But while Minogue decisively settled the governor’s contest, the primary left him with an awkward problem of his own: the man running for lieutenant governor alongside him is the same Republican who helped knock Minogue’s preferred candidate off the ballot.
Minogue emerged as the Republican favorite in April, winning 70% of the vote at the MassGOP convention and using that victory to pressure Brian Shortsleeve to leave the race. Shortsleeve, a businessman and military veteran who served in Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration, stayed in the contest and ultimately cast himself as the more moderate alternative.
Minogue, who has poured millions of dollars of his own money into his campaign, cited his convention victory as justification for avoiding televised debates with Shortsleeve. The two agreed on cutting taxes and cracking down on illegal immigration, and both criticized the Trump administration’s tariffs. But Shortsleeve argued that Minogue’s opposition to abortion rights would make him too conservative for the moderate Massachusetts voters he would need in November.
After initially tacking right earlier in the campaign, Shortsleeve ultimately fashioned himself as a Republican in the mold of two-term Gov. Charlie Baker.
Now Minogue will have to turn his attention to Democratic Gov. Maura Healey, who enters the general election with the advantage. Healey, a former state attorney general, won the open governor’s race in 2022 by defeating Republican Geoff Diehl, a conservative former state representative. Her campaign has already begun targeting Minogue over his support for President Trump, who remains deeply unpopular in Massachusetts.
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Shortsleeve, despite repeatedly questioning whether Minogue could beat Healey, said in July that he would support Minogue if he won the nomination.
That pledge may now be put to the test in a more personal way.
New Bedford City Councilor Shawn Oliver was Shortsleeve’s choice for lieutenant governor. But Oliver also became a central figure in one of the primary’s nastiest intra-party fights: he helped get Minogue’s preferred candidate for lieutenant governor knocked off the ballot following a signature-gathering snafu.
Minogue criticized Oliver during the campaign for his role in challenging the other Republican’s candidacy. In political terms, the message was hard to miss: Shortsleeve and his running mate had helped clear the way for themselves while denying Minogue the lieutenant governor candidate he wanted.
And now Minogue has won the nomination — but Oliver is still standing.
That leaves Minogue with an uncomfortable choice. He can campaign with Oliver and effectively bury the primary dispute, or keep reminding Republican voters that his own preferred candidate was forced out while Oliver, the man who helped make it happen, remains on the ticket.
The irony is particularly striking because Minogue spent the primary portraying himself as an outsider who would disrupt the Massachusetts political establishment. Yet the general-election ticket he is now expected to lead includes a politician who played a role in an internal Republican maneuver that Minogue himself criticized.
For Shortsleeve, the question is whether his promise to back the Republican nominee extends to enthusiastically campaigning with Minogue. For Oliver, it is whether he can credibly ask Minogue’s supporters to rally behind a ticket after helping remove their preferred lieutenant governor candidate from the ballot.
And for Minogue, the primary may have been a landslide — but the political wounds it left behind are not necessarily healed.
The governor’s race is now Minogue versus Healey. But before he can make that case to Massachusetts voters, Minogue may have to convince his own party that the people who helped defeat his preferred ticket deserve a place on his.
