2025 Boston Mayoral Race

She’s probably trying to get her name in the conversation for some other office.
 
Results as of 11:35.

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www.bostonglobe.com

Election results from the Boston mayoral preliminary - The Boston Globe

Follow the election results live on Tuesday.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
 
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OK so I was encouraged to check. Menino obviously had blowout wins basically his whole career, but 1997 he was formally unopposed, which according to Wikipedia was the first time since 1834.

So a mayor has only run unopposed on the general election ballot twice in the last 190 years.

Let's see if Kraft stays in this race. There is no articulable rationale as to how he picks up meaningful ground by November.
 
Justbuildit said:
Let's see if Kraft stays in this race. There is no articulable rationale as to how he picks up meaningful ground by November.
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Last night he promised he was staying in the race. It could be just to save face. He might like the publicity (which has been far more generous than it should be), and thinks this could help him in future political races. He might just be an idiot. Dunno.

He's said he's staying in. Maybe we just see how much more of his own money he's willing to dump into his doomed campaign.
 
ritchiew said:
Last night he promised he was staying in the race. It could be just to save face. He might like the publicity (which has been far more generous than it should be), and thinks this could help him in future political races. He might just be an idiot. Dunno.

He's said he's staying in. Maybe we just see how much more of his own money he's willing to dump into his doomed campaign.
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Eh, you have to say that. Until the moment you drop out you have to be 110% in otherwise the money and attention dries up fast. Maybe he's being entirely honest, maybe he's not, but I wouldn't read too much into that statement.
 
ritchiew said:
Last night he promised he was staying in the race. It could be just to save face. He might like the publicity (which has been far more generous than it should be), and thinks this could help him in future political races. He might just be an idiot. Dunno.

He's said he's staying in. Maybe we just see how much more of his own money he's willing to dump into his doomed campaign.
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"Wait until I really hit them on White Stadium! They ain't seen nothing yet!"
 
It's a good thing Kraft (infamously) doesn't remember what ward he lives in, because he lost all 22 of them last night and didn't even make it close in any of them. Wu won the general election by 29 points in 2021, but she had definite soft spots in some precincts that she needed to shore up. Not so with this year's across-the-board steamrolling. It'll be interesting to see if there were even any individual precincts that he managed to eke out.

Talk triangulating pablum about the issues that most motivate voters (housing, federal government threats to the city), have nothing substantive other than "WU BAD!" on other issues most motivating to voters (addiction crisis/Mass & Cass), and expend way way too much energy on fringe issues that don't motivate people at all (bike lanes, White Stadium)...and this is the perfect storm of suck you reach. He didn't even cobble together any coherent conservative or anti-Wu coalition with his performance in the wards that Wu performed most poorly in 4 years ago. Most of the anti-Wu vote simply stayed home from the lack of plausible alternative given, leading to very anemic overall turnout.

Competitive elections and healthy opposition are a good thing. They keep the people in power--even the ones who are broadly popular--honest. This wasn't a competitive election. And that is a form of malpractice...a history-making bad campaign he's run (especially for the money spent). And not even bad in any sort of halfway-interesting way, just a sort of mind-numbing hopeless rudderlessness that isn't over yet.
 
It's wild that someone to the left of Wu hasn't tried. She seems vulnerable to someone who would want to go in the direction of Somerville Cambridge and Medford with some real progressive politics.
 
as02143 said:
It's wild that someone to the left of Wu hasn't tried. She seems vulnerable to someone who would want to go in the direction of Somerville Cambridge and Medford with some real progressive politics.
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Too many people still work for a living in Boston for that kind of fantasy.
 
Yeah I was going to say, Wu is most vulnerable from her right from the "half my family lives in Saugus and Methuen" voters. There's a reason our last few mayors were elected, and it's not because they were broadly popular leftists. I don't know if she was beatable this cycle, but the best chance was someone painting her as a DSA softy who doesn't understand the perspective of "old Boston". As mentioned above it's a good thing (for her) that she's running against one of the least charismatic big city candidates I can imagine.
 
www.bostonglobe.com

Wu won all but a handful of Boston precincts in Tuesday’s prelim. - The Boston Globe

Michelle Wu won 264 of the city’s 275 precincts, while nonprofit leader Josh Kraft took nine precincts.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

Kraft won only 9 of 275 precincts (3.2%). 7 of the 9 precincts were in Wards 6 & 7 in Southie all closest to City Point (read: whitest Old Southie), where he would have been expected to do well but still managed 1000 fewer votes than Essaibi George in the seven-way '21 primary. The other 2 (plus one that was a direct tie) were in Ward 16 in Dorchester closest to Neponset (read: whitest/almost-Quincyest part of Dot by far), which was also an Essaibi George stronghold 4 years ago that he overall underperformed. The other Essaibi George strongholds (even though she lost the overall wards in the 2021 general) were the precincts in Eastie northeast of the Airport and the northwest half Charlestown. Kraft got waxed throughout those neighborhoods.
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Southie and southeastern Dorchester weren't even the places he was spending most of his money, time, and media, since they went handily for Essaibi George in '21 and figured to be in the bag for him. Literally none of the demographics he was targeting most heavily turned out for him. Just a total, irredeemable squander across-the-board.
 
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