09.09.2024

Teachers union favorite loses big in state rep. race | No Globe, it’s not just male leaders who have trouble saying goodbye | Young professionals to join fight for more housing development | Wu flexes political muscle in proxy war | Quick hits |

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Down but hardly out: Despite rocky first-term, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, with a well-oiled political machine, could still prove hard to beat

Up for reelection next year, Michelle Wu is by any objective assessment the most vulnerable incumbent to lead the city in decades, as she pushes an aggressively progressive and, at times, anti-growth agenda.

Business leaders are fuming over Wu’s proposal to hike commercial tax rates on struggling, half empty office buildings, while developers blame City Hall’s expensive affordable housing and renewable energy mandates for a dramatic falloff in badly needed residential construction.

Then there is the heavy handed diversity policy that has seen hundreds of straight-A, top scoring students denied seats at the city’s once high-performing exam schools.

Oh yeah, and let’s not forget the relentless rollout of, at best, lightly-used bike lanes across the city, snarling traffic and making city streets barely functional at a time when the T is reliably unreliable.

But in spite of all this, the odds of Josh Kraft or any other potential challenger defeating Wu in 2025 remain long, with no incumbent losing a mayoral race since the infamous James Michael Curley in 1950.

And those odds grew longer, not shorter, over the past week.

Ready to take on Wu? Josh Kraft

Wu and her progressive allies, like Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, emerged triumphant in last Tuesday’s Democratic primary in what amounted to a proxy war with local moderate Dems critical of the mayor’s policies.

Allison S. Cartwright, a long-time public defender backed by Wu and the progressive camp, beat long-time Boston City Councilor Erin Murphy, a leading moderate critic of the mayor, in the race for clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County.

Cartwright wound up getting 60 percent of the vote in an election that saw voters across Boston, as well as Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop, go to the polls.

Murphy campaigned hard and collected endorsements from key Democratic Party moderates, like Congressman Stephen Lynch.

With the win, Wu demonstrated the ability of her progressive political machine to turn out the voters in about as low wattage a race as you can imagine.

She’s also sitting on nearly $1.5 million in cash in her campaign account, state campaign finance records show.

All that said, her most likely opponent right now, Josh Kraft, the well-liked, if not particularly charismatic nonprofit executive and son of the billionaire Patriots owner, shouldn’t have any problems on the money front.

And Kraft is clearly eyeing a run, but talk that he might be gearing up for a November announcement, is, well, just talk, according to an advisor.

“Josh Kraft is not currently a candidate for mayor and has no plans or timeline for any kind of an announcement,” the spokesperson said.

Unless she makes some major policy changes, time is also not on Wu’s side here. The Boston mayor may be forced to hike taxes on homeowners later this year as the value of downtown office buildings crumbles in the shift to remote work.

The city’s schools are as dysfunctional as ever, while the big drop off in housing construction in Boston under the Wu administration is likely to push already insane rents and prices even higher.

So while Wu may be riding high right now, we could be looking at a very different picture six or eight months from now.

Those chauvinist power hogs: Globe columnist argues male politicians and executives have a harder time letting go of power

We get it. Columnists often have a sweet spot, an injustice or wrong that gets their keyboard clacking.

And for Shirley Leung it is the often very male dominated world of business, especially in the C suite.

Yet, talk about a sweeping generalization.