Mayor Michelle Wu speaks to reporters at the Lila Frederick school on Tuesday, Sept. 9.
In a lopsided victory that underscores the power of incumbency in Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu bested challenger Josh Kraft last Tuesday with a 48-point lead, winning 71% of the preliminary vote in unofficial results posted by the city’s Election Department.
Kraft won just 21,324 of the more than 92,000 votes cast in the Sept. 9 preliminary vote while Wu secured 66,398 votes, winning in each of the city’s 22 wards. Domingos Darosa finished a distant third place with just 2,409 votes.
Robert Cappucci finished with 2,074 votes.
Just two days after the preliminary, Kraft bowed out of the mayor’s race, vowing to use the remaining $3 million in his campaign coffers to help people struggling with addiction in Boston.
“When I kept looking at the next eight weeks, the negativity, and all that it was going to be about, I realized, wow, I can do more. I can make a better impact for the residents of the city of Boston,” Kraft told WCVB News in an interview on Sept. 12.
Kraft’s poor showing in the preliminary demonstrated both the magnitude of Wu’s campaign, which was backed by unions, activist groups and an army of city workers and Kraft’s, which seemed to struggle to get off the ground.
During her victory speech Tuesday, Wu highlighted the strength of her campaign.
“Over the last five months of this campaign, we held nearly 500 events to connect to our communities, knocked on 80,000 doors across every neighborhood, made 200,000 calls and won by a margin money can’t buy.”
Wu’s volunteers — including city workers, union members and members of progressive community-based organizations — covered nearly all 275 of the city’s polling places. Turnout was down from the 2021 mayoral preliminary, where four candidates garnered more than 20,000 votes with a total of 108,731 ballots cast.
Ana Gonzalez, an office cleaner and 32BJ labor union member, said at Wu’s event that her union has supported the mayor since the beginning of her campaign because of her help in getting them a better contract in September 2023.
“I decided to be here today, and I’ve been the whole day making phone calls to make sure that Michelle would win the reelection, because we are in a difficult time, and we are clear that we need Michelle Wu still to be in office,” said Gonzalez.
Vaughn Goodwin, an organizer with the 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers Eastern Massachusetts labor union, said that he supports Wu for a variety of reasons.
“She supports affordable housing, she supports Boston being open and welcoming to all, she supports public transportation being accessible, and she’s a mother who takes care of her mother,” said Goodwin.
He decided to support Wu instead of Kraft because, “One is a billionaire. One is a mayor of the city.”
In the race for the four at-large seats on the City Council, incumbent councilors finished in the top four: Council President Ruthzee Louijeune finished in first place with 45,500 votes, followed closely by Julia Mejia who garnered 42,245 votes. Erin Murphy had 38,981 votes and Henry Santana finished with 30,670. Four challengers will advance to the general election: Frank Baker, who garnered 26,240 votes; Alexandra Valdez, who received 18,930 votes; Marvin Mathalier who had 13,826 votes and Will Onuoha, who finished with 11,216 votes.
If the incumbents maintain their lead in the general election, which appears likely, given the 4,000-vote gap between Santana and Baker, the current makeup of the council will remain unchanged, but for the District 7 race, where Said “Coach” Ahmed and Miniard Culpepper will advance to the general election. In that race, just 102 votes separated the top five finishers, all of whom garnered more than 1,000 votes. Six other candidates each had fewer than 600 votes.
The results of the council races were somewhat of a second victory for Wu. None of her allies on the council lost a seat. Santana, who struggled to collect 1,500 nomination signatures by the May 20 deadline and received help from the Wu administration, appears safe in fourth place, 4,000 votes ahead of Baker.
Wu will most likely face no opposition on the Nov. 4 ballot. Third-place finisher Domingos Darosa garnered just 2,409 votes, shy of the 3,000 he would need to appear on the ballot. Darosa has requested a recount.
This story originally appeared on flipsidenews.net.
