Two of Maura Healey’s Judicial Picks Trace Back to Her Love Life and the Boston Press Never Asked Why

beast01 image via Shutterstock
beast01 image via Shutterstock

Gary Hart's presidential campaign collapsed overnight after reporters caught him with a mistress on a yacht.

Maura Healey has reshaped two different courts with appointments tied to who she loves and nobody has blinked.

Each one leads back to someone she has loved, and the Boston press has never asked why.

The Ex Girlfriend Who Became a Supreme Judicial Court Nominee

Maura Healey ran the Massachusetts attorney general's office for twelve years while she was involved in a relationship with Gabrielle Wolohojian, a judge on the state's Appeals Court.

That relationship ended in 2019, while Healey still held the attorney general's job.

Healey won the governor's office a few years later and immediately had the power to reshape the state's top courts.

She used that power to nominate Wolohojian to a seat on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

The Boston Globe editorial board called the move "dreadful on optics" and said it had to ask whether a judge could set aside personal bias toward her former partner.

The Globe's own ethics standard requires judges to step aside from any case involving "personal bias or prejudice concerning a party."

No cable panel spent a single segment asking whether Healey had just stacked the state's highest court with an ex.

A male governor who nominated a former girlfriend to his state's supreme court would have been a six-week news cycle.

The Married Subordinate Who Became the Unofficial First Lady of Massachusetts

Healey's current partner is Joanna Lydgate, a lawyer who previously worked in the attorney general's office Healey ran.

Lydgate was still married and sharing custody of two young children when her relationship with Healey began several months after she left that office, according to the account the couple has given publicly.

Lydgate has since divorced and is known publicly as the governor's partner, though the two have never married.

Because they are not legally married, Lydgate faces none of the financial disclosure requirements that apply to the spouse of a sitting governor.

Healey also nominated a lawyer on Lydgate's staff to a Superior Court judgeship.

A spokesperson for Healey said the nominee was fully qualified and that Lydgate "was not involved" in the selection.

Reporters took that answer and moved on.

That conflict is the mirror image of the Wolohojian nomination, and no one in the Boston press has connected the two.

Why Gary Hart Lost Everything and Maura Healey Lost Nothing

Gary Hart was the Democratic frontrunner for president in 1987 until the Miami Herald staked out his townhouse and caught him with Donna Rice near a boat called Monkey Business.

His campaign was finished within days, and he never ran for president again.

Rich Noyes of NewsBusters ran the numbers on a comparable case and found that ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted about thirty minutes to Stormy Daniels allegations against Donald Trump alone.

Those same three networks gave Paula Jones's harassment claims against Bill Clinton a combined sixteen seconds of airtime.

Juanita Broaddrick's rape allegation against Clinton got seven minutes on a single network and nothing anywhere else.

Tim Graham of NewsBusters has called scandal coverage "the most fertile ground for exploring double standards and liberal bias," and Andrew Cuomo's buried nursing home scandal is that same formula running again in real time.

Massachusetts newsrooms follow the identical script.

Healey is also the first openly lesbian governor in American history, a status that has made her personal life close to untouchable for a press corps terrified of looking intolerant.

That shield has let Healey build a court system stacked with people tied to her romantic history while two serious Republican challengers line up to take her on in 2026.

Her opponents, Mike Kennealy and Brian Shortsleeve, are both running on records of competent management, a contrast Healey's court picks do nothing to blunt.

Voters in Massachusetts are about to decide whether competence or connections put someone on the bench, and so far the Boston press has only ever asked that question about one kind of governor.

Sources:

  • Rusty Weiss, "The Love Life Details That Would Destroy a Male Politician – But Haven't Touched Maura Healey," RedState, October 23, 2026.
  • Matt Bai, "Gary Hart, Tabloid Politics and America's 'Aha!' Moment," Fox News, 2018.
  • Rich Noyes, "Brazen Double Standard Between Coverage of Stormy Daniels and Clinton Accusers," The Washington Times, March 26, 2018.
  • Brian Flood, "Media, Democrats' Cuomo Scandals Bias," Fox News, 2024.

Start Commenting!

You may also like...