Gubernatorial candidate Andrea James visits Greenfield

GREENFIELD — Andrea James, a former criminal defense attorney, visited The LAVA Center on Monday to make her pitch as an Independent candidate for governor as she seeks 10,000 signatures to appear on the November ballot.

James is running on a platform that emphasizes working “for the needs of the people,” supporting universal health care and child care, building affordable housing, stabilizing rent, fostering equity in K-12 school funding and ending state cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Although James first declared her candidacy as a Democrat in March 2025, gearing up to challenge incumbent Gov. Maura Healey, she changed her party affiliation with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance to unenrolled in November 2025, as reported by WBUR.

Currently, Healey has no major Democratic primary challengers, while three Republican candidates are mounting their bids for election: Mike Kennealy, Michael Minogue and Brian Shortsleeve.

James, a Roxbury resident, was sentenced in 2010 to serve two years in federal prison for wire fraud and was disbarred. While in federal prison in Connecticut, she and other incarcerated women founded Families for Justice as Healing, a Massachusetts nonprofit dedicated to ending incarceration of women and girls. She then founded the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. In 2025, she earned the Massachusetts Black Women Attorneys’ Justice Geraldine Hines Public Service Award, and she won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 2016.

“That experience has transformed my life in terms of the work that I have done for the past 15 years that led to me creating and founding these organizations,” James said about her experience while in prison.

James spoke Monday to a small group of residents about her time spent “crisscrossing” the state since last May to meet working people and families, including visits to western Massachusetts. She highlighted her grassroots campaign as being driven by the people.

“We’re running a people-led campaign, and it’s a grassroots campaign, and you can’t really say that with any legitimacy unless you actually have done what we’ve done since a year ago in May,” James said.

From her time spent in western Massachusetts, including a visit to Greenfield earlier this month to watch the Four Rivers Public Charter School documentary on ICE, priorities for housing and education funding are what she’s heard locally that mirror the same issues that communities out east are facing. She said she supports making sure the wealthiest are paying their fair share in taxes to make sure that schools are well-funded statewide.

She also mentioned that the population of formerly incarcerated individuals may not know that they are eligible to vote after being released from prison, or feel that their voices don’t matter in elections. She said every resource should be made available to educate formerly incarcerated individuals about their right to vote in Massachusetts.

James is critical of the narrative that Healey has the race “sewn up,” explaining that 65% of registered voters are Independent or unenrolled. She noted that many formerly enrolled Democrats don’t feel represented — speaking as a formerly enrolled Democrat.

“I think it’s very dismissive to have this kind of narrative that … she’s got this all sewn up,” James said. “I mean, what is that saying to 65% of the electorate that is not happy, is not satisfied for a number of reasons, and why aren’t we trying to figure that out?”

Additionally, James is critical of the current Healey administration as a whole, with her campaign website saying how, “The political establishment has grown comfortable speaking to insiders and donors, while everyday people struggle with the cost of housing, child care, health care and just getting by.”

While turnout for The LAVA Center event was small, James said she intends to continue to campaign in western Massachusetts and to hit her 10,000 signature goal.