Patriots Owner's Son Challenges Michelle Wu for Mayor of Boston

New York Times

04-02-2025

Josh Kraft, a son of the owner of the New England Patriots, Robert K. Kraft, and the head of the team's philanthropic foundation, announced on Tuesday that he is running against Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, a progressive Democrat, who is up for re-election this year.
At an event kicking off his campaign, Mr. Kraft, 57, a political newcomer running as a Democrat, pledged to address the city's housing affordability crisis and improve its public schools. The biggest cheers from supporters came when he promised to end the proliferation of bike lanes in Boston — one of Ms. Wu's signature initiatives, and a cause of some annoyance in congested neighborhoods of the city, which Mr. Kraft cited as evidence of her failure to listen to residents.
'On issue after issue, the mayor has become less and less receptive, and more and more disconnected from the communities, their feedback, and their needs,' he said.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Wu did not offer an immediate response to Mr. Kraft's criticism.
Mr. Kraft is expected to face an uphill battle to unseat Ms. Wu, 40, who in 2021 became the first woman and person of color to be elected mayor.
Groundbreaking mayors of other big left-leaning cities have recently been cast aside by voters. The first Black woman elected to the job in San Francisco, London Breed, lost her re-election bid last year to Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune with no political experience. Lori Lightfoot, the first Black woman to lead Chicago, lost in 2023, the first incumbent mayor to be defeated there in decades.
Mr. Kraft is gambling that Boston voters, too, are ready for a change. But he will have to persuade them that his experience running nonprofits and charities has prepared him to run a city of 650,000.
Voters may not be inclined to oust Ms. Wu at a moment when the city faces no major crisis, said Brian Jencunas, a political strategist and corporate consultant who has worked for both Democrats and Republicans.
'The economy remains strong; it's one of the safest cities in the country,' he said. 'There's no reason you would look at this city and say, 'The incumbent mayor is going to lose.''
Introducing himself to a city where he is largely unknown and only recently became a resident (he comes from Boston's wealthy suburbs), Mr. Kraft was quick to challenge assumptions based on his privileged upbringing. In the opening scene of his campaign video, a former colleague at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, where Mr. Kraft worked for 30 years and served as president, describes how Mr. Kraft rolled up his sleeves and dug in to the mission of supporting urban youth.
'Josh could have gone into his family business,' the former colleague, Isidra Quinones, said in the video. 'Rather than that, he chose a life of service. He swept floors, drove the van, dropped kids off, ran the front desk.'
Whether his family's fame and wealth will help or hurt Mr. Kraft's electoral chances remains to be seen. His father, a billionaire business executive, built a sports dynasty in New England; the Patriots played in nine Super Bowls, winning six, from 2001 to 2019. But the team's image was tainted when it was accused of cheating in the 'Deflategate' scandal, and it has struggled on the field since the departures of its star coach and quarterback; in 2024, the Patriots won four games and lost 13.
Another potential wild card in the mayor's race is President Trump, and the possibility that he could target Boston for aggressive immigration enforcement. Mr. Trump's 'border czar,' Tom Homan, publicly criticized Ms. Wu in November after she said that existing laws prohibited the city from helping federal agents who seek to detain or deport undocumented immigrants on civil warrants. She is one of four mayors who has been asked to testify next week before a Congressional committee investigating so-called sanctuary cities; Ms. Wu has said she will cooperate with the committee, but asked for more time.
In Boston, where Vice President Kamala Harris trounced Mr. Trump in November, winning 77 percent of the vote, a firm stance against threats from the White House could give Ms. Wu a boost.
'Voters in Boston don't like Trump, and that's not going to change,' said Mary Anne Marsh, a veteran Democratic strategist. 'If he goes after the city, people are going to rally around her.'
Mr. Kraft carries some Trump-related baggage: His father, along with the team's former head coach, Bill Belichick, and star quarterback, Tom Brady maintained friendships with Mr. Trump during his first term, alienated some fans of the team.
Ms. Wu's progressive policies have drawn criticism from some real estate developers and business leaders, who say her cool relations with corporate interests have chilled the city's economic climate. Her proposals for rent control and residential property tax relief, aimed at making Boston more affordable, failed in the state legislature, raising the risk that voters will become disillusioned with her leadership.
Mr. Kraft said on Tuesday that he would cap rents in the city by offering building owners tax relief in exchange, and that he would add more affordable housing.
Ms. Wu has won concessions from the city's police union that she says will make the police force more accountable, and has overseen a historic reduction in violent crime.
Voters will weigh her impact on the identity and reputation of a city that has long struggled to come to terms with its own history of racism, where decades of leadership by white Irish and Italian men came to be seen as increasingly out of sync with a racially diverse population.
Mr. Kraft would make his own history, if he were to win, as the city's first Jewish mayor.
Ms. Wu, a daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, recently became the first Boston mayor to give birth while in office. Her third child, a daughter, was born Jan. 13. Ms. Wu said she resumed working from home within a day or two; last week, she returned to City Hall, with the baby asleep on her shoulder.