NEARLY HALFWAY THROUGH her first term, Gov. Maura Healey has brought into the State House a longtime political hand.
Corey Welford, who left for the private sector after serving as a top adviser to Healey when she was the state’s attorney general, returned several weeks ago to Beacon Hill with the title of senior strategist.
Governors often turn to close political advisers as they focus on the spade work of government. Michael Dukakis, who served three terms in the corner office, had John Sasso, who also joined him on the presidential campaign trail. In more modern times, Charlie Baker had Tim Buckley, who was valued because he “has no problem telling me I’m wrong,” Healey’s Republican predecessor once said.
Welford reports to Healey chief of staff Kate Cook and is working with senior adviser Gabrielle Viator. His post involves focusing on “the administration’s agenda to improve the lives of the people of Massachusetts, [and] helping to coordinate that work across secretariats and the executive office,” according to a Healey spokesperson.
Welford has spent the last eight years as a vice president at CTP, an advertising and public relations company based in Boston’s North End. He founded the public affairs practice at the company, whose clients have included DraftKings, Delta Dental, and the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans.
Welford graduated from College of the Holy Cross with a history degree in 1995, working as a teacher at a Billerica high school before stints as a researcher for Time magazine and CBS Sports, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He is a veteran of gubernatorial campaigns. His resume includes stints working for Shannon O’Brien and Tom Reilly’s respective runs for the corner office. Alongside Healey’s sister Tara, Welford also advised Healey during her 2022 run for governor.
Welford started his new job on July 15.
Prodding parentage
In an interview with the governor on Wednesday, a somewhat odd exchange occurred when GBH radio host Jim Braude asked, “Would you say you’re a childless cat lady, governor?” Gov. Maura Healey laughed, and Braude pushed, “I mean, it is fair, is it not?”
Hands clasped and a slight smile on her face, Healey replied, “Well, our step-children would disagree with that,” referring to the children of her partner, Joanna Lydgate, who shares custody with her ex-husband, “and our teenager at home would disagree with that.”
The typically private Healey, like Vice President Kamala Harris, is part of a blended family. But the parental status of women in politics has become a sour flashpoint in the context of former President Donald Trump’s veep pick – Ohio senator J.D. Vance – saying the nation is “effectively run … by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
Vance said that those without children – specifically referencing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; Harris, who has step-children; and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has adopted children with his husband – lack a “direct stake” in the country’s future.
Beyond generally advising that people not judge others’ parental circumstances, Healey asked “who are you to say what brings a woman fulfillment? … Not only is it a ridiculous, cruel, and disgusting comment, it’s also really serious because what it actually speaks to, underlying all of this, the degree of misogyny and sexism that both J.D. Vance and Donald Trump have toward women.”
As the presidential race swirled with unpleasantness, one of the few major pieces of legislation to make it out of a late night end-of-session legislative rush on Beacon Hill will put a long-sought button on the question of who qualifies as a parent in Massachusetts.
People who have children through birth, adoption, marriage, surrogacy, sperm donation, and assisted reproduction like in-vitro fertilization – as well as those who become “de facto” parents – are included under updated parentage legislation now awaiting Healey’s signature. The governor expressed her support for the law earlier in 2024.
Under existing law, someone must formally adopt their non-biological child to be considered a parent. In changing that narrow requirement, Massachusetts joins the bulk of New England states to update their laws on parentage.