Will Minogue’s Trump ties, abortion stance make him unelectable in Mass.? – The Boston Globe

Minogue’s words during a recent appearance on WCVB’s “On The Record” — “I’m a Catholic and I am pro-life” — certainly run counter to the careful abortion rights positioning of other Massachusetts Republicans who won the governor’s office over the past three-plus decades.

When Charlie Baker ran for governor in 2014, his first general election campaign ad featured his then-17-year-old daughter saying, “You’re totally pro-choice and bipartisan.” When Mitt Romney ran for governor in 2002, he stated in a debate, “I will preserve and protect a women’s right to choose.” When Bill Weld ran for governor in 1990, he told the Globe, “Count me as ‘modified pro-choice.’”

Over time, these positions evolved in different ways.

Weld went from “modified pro-choice” to showing up at a national GOP convention to lobby against the party’s antiabortion platform. When Romney ran for president, he retreated completely from the stance he’d taken in Massachusetts. Despite Baker’s “totally pro-choice” positioning, he ultimately vetoed a bill that expanded access to abortion, including a provision that would have allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to get an abortion without parental consent. The Legislature overturned that veto, and the measure became law in 2020.

As reported by WBUR, the Minogue campaign put out a statement that said, “Mike Minogue cannot and will not change the law,” without elaborating beyond that.

In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned abortion as a national right, making state law even more critical. Since then, Governor Maura Healey has made the strengthening of abortion protections for patients and providers even more of a signature cause.

Last week’s ruling by a federal appeals court in New Orleans, which halted access to a common abortion drug, mifepristone, through the mail for telehealth patients, once again underscored the political uncertainty around abortion access. Healey, who joined other Democrat-led states in stockpiling the drug to guard against a potential ban of it, quickly issued a statement that said she would “keep standing up to efforts by President Trump and his allies to roll back reproductive rights.”

On Monday, the Supreme Court temporarily restored access to mifepristone. Both sides have a week to respond.

While Minogue can try to argue that abortion is protected in Massachusetts, and there’s nothing he can or would do to change that, these are unpredictable times for reproductive rights. It’s a key issue that puts him at odds with many Massachusetts voters.

His first campaign ad since the GOP convention that endorsed him introduces him as “a new kind of governor.”

By Massachusetts standards, he certainly would be different. He’s much closer to Trump than other recent Republican candidates, having hosted that Vance fund-raiser and donated nearly $1 million to Trump and MAGA candidates in 2024.

Of Massachusetts’ 5 million voters, 1.2 million are registered Democrats, and 423,387 are registered Republicans. Unenrolled or independent voters, who make up 3.2 million registered voters, are key to winning statewide office. Given that Trump’s overall approval rating in the state is about 33 percent, Minogue’s Trump connections are not going to help him much with that crowd.

Polling also shows that the vast majority of Massachusetts voters strongly support abortion rights and are more likely to support elected officials if they work to advance legislation that will prevent the government from interfering with personal decisions about pregnancy.

Minogue will no doubt want to talk about transgender athletes, illegal immigration, the cost of housing and utilities, and the overall issue of economic growth. His allies are also trying to drive Shortsleeve out of the race, and in the WCVB interview, Minogue argued that the overwhelming endorsement he got from the roughly 1,800 delegates who attended the convention shows where the Republican Party is in Massachusetts right now.

And so it does. But is that where most Massachusetts voters are?

There’s a legitimate debate to be had, for sure, about the economic direction of the state.

But to have it, Minogue will have to convince voters to look past his Trump association and his “pro-life” self-description. Meanwhile, a fellow Republican is calling him unelectable — music to Healey’s ears.

Joan Vennochi is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at joan.vennochi@globe.com. Follow her @joan_vennochi.