Healey defends record as McMahon attacks in final debate

BOSTON — Attorney General Maura Healey on Wednesday afternoon parried a series of attacks from her Republican challenger Jay McMahon over the Democrat’s record on guns, drugs and suing the Trump administration, defending her office over the course of the final, hour-long debate in the race.

Healey, who is widely expected to win a second, four-year term as attorney general, highlighted her work prosecuting drug traffickers and preventing dangerous copycat assault weapons from being sold in Massachusetts.

She also said that while she doesn’t relish suing President Donald Trump, she will continue to do so if she believes it’s in the interests of the state or its residents.

“I don’t wish for or want opportunities to sue the federal government. But it is my job as attorney general to stand up for the interests of our state, for our residents, for our businesses and for our values,” Healey said.

While Healey rarely challenged her opponent’s positions, she did push back against his characterization of her work as politically motivated or lacking. McMahon described himself as the “law enforcement candidate and anti-corruption candidate” in the race.

The debate was hosted by WBUR, the Boston Globe and UMass Boston, and was streamed live and aired on the radio Wednesday afternoon. WBUR’s Deborah Becker and James Pindell of the Globe moderated.

McMahon, a trial attorney and former police officer and member of the military, challenged Healey over her efforts to combat the opioid abuse epidemic, which claimed the life of his oldest son.

“Absolutely, we’re not achieving success…We should be able to do much better for our citizens than 2,000 deaths a year,” McMahon argued, suggesting he would more aggressively go after traffickers of heroin and fentanyl.

Citing recent busts in Lawrence and Methuen where federal authorities seized huge quantities of fentanyl, McMahon accused Healey of encouraging cities to become so-called “sanctuary cities.” “In other words, she won’t deal with the feds,” he said.

“It’s totally inaccurate,” Healey countered, saying her office works with U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling’s office as well as law enforcement in New Hampshire to target drug traffickers. She also highlighted the public policy reforms she has worked with Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, to pass and implement over the past four years.

The feisty exchange over opioids was one of several where Healey and the moderators stepped in to correct McMahon as he tried to paint Healey as a chief prosecutor who is “soft on crime.”

McMahon notably said he didn’t trust Healey to investigate overtime abuses by the State Police, citing a ruling earlier this month from the Supreme Judicial Court that dismissed thousands of drug cases tainted by a chemist who was abusing the evidence at an Amherst drug lab. That ruling, which McMahon read from, blamed two former assistant attorneys general for prosecutorial misconduct.

“I don’t trust them investigating corruption when they have it in their own office,” McMahon said, arguing that Lelling has done more than her to hold the State Police accountable.

Both Healey and Becker, the moderator, jumped in to correct McMahon and make clear that the the two former prosecutors worked under former Attorney General Martha Coakley, not Healey, and were neither hired by nor supervised by Healey.

McMahon later accused Healey of suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome” to explain why the attorney general had sued the White House at least 36 times in the past two years, and had not sued the previous Obama administration “at all.”

“That’s actually not true,” Healey replied, indicating that she had been lead counsel in lawsuit against the Obama administration over the federal enforcement of the Defense of Marriage Act in Massachusetts. That case was adjudicated while Healey worked in the attorney general’s office, but before she was elected to the top job.

On guns, McMahon once again challenged Healey’s decision to step up enforcement of the state’s assault weapons ban following the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, saying she “banned wholesale categories of guns because she doesn’t like guns. She has a personal animus toward guns, and apparently gun owners.”

Healey replied, “That’s a ridiculous assertion. I’m doing my job as your attorney general. We have laws on the books. It’s my job to enforce them.”

A Second Amendment rights advocate, McMahon said no one in Massachusetts had been harmed by a rifle since 2006, well before Healey set about stopping the sales of weapons like the AR-15. But Healey said she doesn’t think Massachusetts should “wait for a calamity here” before taking action.

“It’s a violation of the Second Amendment when you start distinguishing, and saying you can have this, you can’t have that,” McMahon charged. “The Constitution doesn’t know those distinctions, only Maura Healey does. And she’s making us live by it.”

Healey countered by saying that the courts have upheld her enforcement of the state’s gun laws in the face of lawsuits from the National Rifle Association.

McMahon may not trust Healey’s office to investigate the State Police, but Healey said her office has been aggressive in pursuing the overtime abuse case and has won indictments against three former lieutenants.

Healey, however, would not go as far as Democrat for governor Jay Gonzalez, who has called for the State Police Col. Kerry Gilpin, and Pubic Safety Secretary Dan Bennett to be fired over the overtime scandal.

“I do support though, the reforms that have been undertaken by the current colonel and by the Baker administration. We’re going to continue to work in partnership,” she said.

Healey and McMahon may not agree on much, but they did find common ground over the need to make treatment available to those addicted to opioids and to seek alternatives to incarceration for addicts caught up in the criminal justice system.