FACING REPORTERS asking questions about where she went on a recent trip out of state, Gov. Maura Healey maintained this week that “my personal life is my personal life and I’m going to work to make sure that privacy is maintained for my family.”

Except, perhaps, what she tells a newspaper’s “Love Letters” columnist.

That inconsistency over what’s public and private was on display on the Boston Globe’s homepage yesterday morning.

Over the last several days, the Globe has played up its story on Healey and her aides refusing to say where she traveled for four days sometime in February because it was a “personal trip.” The lack of basic details constitutes a break from past governors and it is “further narrowing the scope of what information Healey says she’s willing to make public, and when,” the Globe reported.

The newspaper also noted that the refusal “marked the first instance in which her office shielded basic details of her travel destination even after the fact.” Healey still plans to offer details about work-related travel, though when the governor leaves the state, the constitution does not distinguish between personal and work trips in outlining the shift in the power of the office to other statewide officials.

So it didn’t go unnoticed inside and outside the State House when the Globe’s homepage on Tuesday morning featured a news story on Healey defending herself, tucked just below a feature in the Globe: A podcast in which its “Love Letters” columnist Meredith Goldstein sat down with Healey and her partner, Joanna Lydgate, to talk about their relationship and what music is on their playlist. “To be clear, this is not an interview about politics,” Goldstein told listeners. “It’s a story about a partnership with a lot of pressure put on it, and how music helps them cope.” 

But politicians and politics are like fish and water. It’s what they constantly swim in, a choice they made, and it can sometimes be suffocating for them and their families. People walk up to them in restaurants and supermarkets, either with a kind word, or a harangue about a vote. Protesters – in Healey’s case, neo-Nazis – show up outside their homes. Female politicians, in particular, have been targeted by cranks.

The spotlight takes its toll, as Healey herself acknowledged on the “Love Letters” podcast. “You’re constantly on, right? And I think it’s hard in a few ways,” she said, opening up about her relationship with Lydgate. “One, I have very little time. My time is so taken up with stuff on the job, and that means that we really need to work hard to find time for one another, and to preserve that space. That is a challenge, it is always a work in progress. I also think it’s just hard, because it’s weird if your partner is the governor. You can’t go out places, you can’t go out to dinner without people looking at you or oftentimes coming up to you. You can’t turn on the TV without seeing my face on the screen or reading about me in the paper.”

The personal trip, however, remains private, despite the constitutional impact. When the governor leaves, and the lieutenant governor also leaves, the powers of the office go to the secretary of state, per the state constitution, which does not delineate between a personal, political or work-related trip. It may be an archaic way of doing things in the era of Zoom and cell phones, but it’s what the state constitution says.

That’s what happened in February. Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll later disclosed she was also traveling, due to a death in the family, and it was Secretary Bill Galvin who announced he was acting governor. (Galvin’s office does receive a courtesy head’s up from Healey’s team when this occurs; there is not a notification requirement.)

So when WBUR host Tiziana Dearing had Healey on “Radio Boston” on Tuesday, she asked the governor the fair question of “why you’re drawing the line in a different place” than other governors. “There have been times when I have disclosed where I have been on personal trips, as other governors have done. And also, it’s not the case that that’s the way it’s always been done,” Healey said, before she again said she would disclose her work-related travel but not personal travel.

As Healey has come under fire from the Globe, she’s getting aid from an unlikely corner: Boston Herald columnist Joe Battenfeld, who regularly attempts to lance liberal pols, defended the governor, saying in a column today, “Security is a legitimate issue in this day and age. The governor’s office doesn’t want to be advertising every movement she makes.” Besides, he added, voters don’t care.

Matt Stout, the Globe reporter who wrote about Healey’s inconsistency, was on WBUR’s reaction panel after Healey’s appearance. He has covered both Deval Patrick and Charlie Baker. In March 2020, reporters were aware that Baker was with his family in Utah, and he cut his trip short to come back and declare a state of emergency, sending Massachusetts into a pandemic lockdown.

“Since she’s taken office, Governor Healey kind of set a baseline of promising to be more transparent in ways than other governors have, and she has taken steps like releasing her calendar and other things,” he said. “But I think there’s also this pullback, to a degree, on transparency that we’ve seen from predecessors.”