Andrea James, an advocate for incarcerated and previously imprisoned ladies and women, filed paperwork Monday to run for governor in 2026 as a Democrat, creating a possible matchup with Gov. Maura Healey, in accordance with marketing campaign finance data.
James is the founder and government director of The Nationwide Council for Incarcerated and Previously Incarcerated Ladies and Ladies. A previously incarcerated lady and felony protection lawyer, James has lengthy labored to lower jail populations, in accordance with her biography.
She didn’t instantly return a number of telephone calls from the Herald Monday afternoon.
James can be the founding father of Households for Justice as Therapeutic, which raises public consciousness of ladies because the “fastest-growing incarcerated population and to use its voice to shift society from a criminal legal system focused on punishment, to a system based on human justice,” her web site stated.
“Her work is focused on ending incarceration of women and girls and contributing to the shift from a criminal legal system focused on police and prisons, to a system led by directly affected people from within their communities and based on individual and community accountability,” James’ web site stated.
James earned a regulation diploma at Northeastern College however was quickly suspended in 2008 from practising regulation after she was accused of misappropriating consumer funds, in accordance with a letter on file with the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers.
“For all of the foregoing reasons, an information shall be filed with the Supreme Judicial Court recommending that the respondent, Andrea C. Goode-James, be disbarred, retroactive to Feb. 26, 2008, the effective date of her temporary suspension,” the letter stated.
James stated she was sentenced in 2010 to 2 years in federal jail for wire fraud after working as a felony protection and actual property conveyance lawyer. In an article she wrote for Time, James stated she discovered herself in a “Connecticut prison because of one mistake in judgement.”
“I left behind my husband, adult children, parents, 12-year-old daughter and 5-month-old son, who I was still breastfeeding at the time. My new home was the prison facility, where I was warehoused with over 200 other women, crammed side-by-side in bunks piled on top of each other,” she wrote within the article.
James is the primary Democrat to publicly float a problem to Healey, who stated final month she plans to run for reelection in 2026. A ballot performed by the College of Massachusetts Amherst discovered Healey had a 52% approval score, a slight downtick from the 58% she maintained in October.
A number of Republicans have stated they’re contemplating leaping into the race, together with Mike Kennealy, a former housing and financial growth secretary below Gov. Charlie Baker, and Peter Durant, a state senator from Spencer.
Brian Shortsleeve, a enterprise capitalist and former MBTA official, can be contemplating working for governor. He drew one of many first endorsements of the 2026 election cycle from state Rep. Marc Lombardo, a Billerica Republican who unsuccessfully ran for a high management submit within the Home.
