There’s finally an announced candidate in the election next year to replace Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Coakley has served as AG since 2007. Instead of seeking a third term she is running for governor. That leaves open perhaps the state’s second highest profile office and the first announced candidate is Democrat Maura Healey, an assistant attorney general under Coakley for six years.

Healey says she is proud of the way Coakley has handled her responsibilities. She declined to specify anything she’d have done differently if she’d led the office.

“There are any number of hard decisions that an AG has to make on a daily basis and hard calls and complicated issues that the attorney general has to think through,” Healey says.

Coakley released a statement praising Healey for her work to protect consumers and homeowners, and for leading the office’s challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

But a Coakley spokesperson says the AG has no plans at this time to endorse anyone in the race.

A source tells the State House News Service that another candidate is likely to announce soon: Democratic state Representative Harold Naughton of Clinton.