When it comes to saving a beloved beaver, Maura Healey is on top of it – even paying a personal visit to the rodent with camera crews in tow.
But Healey doesn’t extend the same quick-thinking sympathies to communities overwhelmed with migrants or overdevelopment. Or frustrated Second Amendment advocates.
Give the guv credit at least for jumping on to a popular cause, like Nibi the beaver. Healey to the rescue!
It took her just a day to figure out that her MassWildlife bureaucrats and experts had made a huge miscalculation trying to force Nibi back into the wild. So she reversed course quicker than a beaver can slap its tail in the water.
A day after issuing a permit to keep Nibi at Newhouse Wildlife Rescue, the schlepped up to the facility for an up close visit with Nibi. Her press office kindly let us know she also visited with orphaned baby possums, a baby fox, a skunk and a duck.
“Nibi is adorable!” Healey gushed in a press release. “I sometimes saw beavers when I was growing up, but this was my first time seeing one up close. They are fascinating, industrious animals.”
Her press office kindly supplied the media with a photo of Healey admiring Nibi in her makeshift pond.
No surprise, since Nibi’s plight had attracted national attention from thousands of animal lovers who now undoubtedly love the Democratic governor.
Healey, though, has shown no such political skills when it comes to solving the migrant crisis.
Rather than take decisive action to change the state law mandating the state provide shelter and food to thousands of migrants flooding the state, she allowed the problem to grow until it became a huge burden on the state budget and surrounding towns and cities, whose hotels have been inundated with people from out of the country.
Healey eventually did take action to limit the stays of migrants at state-provided shelters, but by then the crisis had gotten out of hand, costing an estimated billion dollars a year.
The crisis has been one of the reasons Healey’s popularity has been relatively low compared to other recent governors.
But now with Nibi saved, Healey – who brought her partner to the wildlife rehab facility where the beaver will now stay — can rest easy knowing her poll numbers will now be just as good as Republican Charlie Baker’s.
The bureaucrats in charge of the Wildlife division probably aren’t too thrilled, but they don’t matter compared to animal lovers who actually vote.
