Ex-girlfriend of Massachusetts governor wins OK for judge spot

BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts panel charged with reviewing judicial appointments voted Wednesday to approve the nomination to the state’s highest court of Gabrielle R. Wolohojian, a former romantic partner of Gov. Maura Healey.

The 6-1 vote assures Wolohojian, an Appeals Court associate justice, a seat on the seven-member Supreme Judicial Court.

Healey nominated Wolohojian to the post and has said their past personal relationship shouldn’t deny the state the benefit of having her serve on the high court.

Most members of the Governor’s Council agreed.

“There’s no question in my mind that this nominee is qualified,” Councilor Terrence Kennedy said during a brief discussion period before the vote. “I have never asked a nominee anything about their personal life and I never will.”

Another member of the council, Joseph Ferreira, said “whatever relationship she had with whomever is absolutely irrelevant.”

The lone dissenting council member, Tara Jacobs, who represents the western part of the state, said she had concerns about the process that led to Wolohojian’s nomination.

“My conception is that it was a very small and insular like-minded group lacking diversity in thought but also in regional representation,” she said. “From an inclusion standpoint, it just felt very exclusionary in that you couldn’t have a more insider nominee.”

Jacobs also said Wolohojian “has breathed rarified air from the time she was young.”

“She intellectualizes the marginalized community’s struggle in a way that feels very much a bubble of privilege is attached,” said Jacobs.

In her nomination hearing last week, Wolohojian was not asked directly by any of the seven Democrats on the council about whether she would recuse herself from cases involving Healey and her administration, saying such decisions are taken by judges a case-by-case basis.

“Recusal is something that I take very seriously,” she said last week. “I have absolutely no interest and never have in sitting on cases I shouldn’t sit on or not sitting on cases I should sit on.”