BOSTON — Boston Mayor Michelle Wu will run unopposed for in her reelection bid after a challenger didn’t garner enough votes to advance to the general election, the city’s election department announced Monday.
Wu, the city’s first Asian and female leader and a frequent target of the Trump administration, is seeking a second four-year term. She was expected to face Josh Kraft, a nonprofit leader and son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, but he dropped out after losing badly to her in the preliminary election earlier this month.
Since the top two vote-getters advance, attention turned to third-place finisher Domingos DaRosa. But after a recount of several wards by the city’s election board was completed Monday, DaRosa, a community activist who was born in the Cape Verde Islands, did not garner the 3,000 votes needed to qualify to be on the ballot in November.
The last time a mayor ran unopposed in Boston was Mayor Thomas Menino in 1997.
Wu thanked everyone who voted for her and said in a statement that her focus in the coming weeks would be getting people to come out to vote for her and City Council candidates.
“I’m humbled by the overwhelming support across every neighborhood and every ward to keep going in our work to make Boston a home for everyone,” said Wu, who spent much of the year jousting with the federal government over immigration.
DaRosa acknowledged he came up short but blamed the lack of visibility and money for the outcome.
“It’s going to teach people what happens in local politics,” DaRosa said regarding the fact that voters will have only one choice in November. “Our conversation about how to make the city better always gravitates to who has the most money. It’s not about who is doing the actual leg work, which I have actually been doing.”
Erin O’Brien, a UMass Boston political science professor, acknowledged that uncontested races “don’t feel good for democracy,” but she said Wu was overwhelmingly chosen by city voters in the preliminary election — a dominant showing that suggests she “could be mayor as long as she wants.”
Members of the Trump administration, often led by the president’s border czar Tom Homan, have accused Boston of not doing enough to crack down on illegal immigration and threatened a surge in arrests. Boston is commonly known as a sanctuary city, and Wu has repeatedly said she wants it to be a welcoming place for immigrants.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Wu, the city of Boston and its police department over its sanctuary city policies, claiming they’re interfering with immigration enforcement. In response, Wu accused President Donald Trump of “attacking cities to hide his administration’s failures.”
On the day of the preliminary election, the Department of Homeland Security put out a statement announcing the arrests of seven people as part of a crackdown in Massachusetts.
Kraft, a fellow Democrat and a nonprofit leader, injected millions of his own personal money into his campaign and set records for spending in a Boston mayoral preliminary election. He had also been critical of Trump’s attacks and pushed Wu particularly hard on housing, saying she hadn’t done enough to increase options and affordability in Boston.
During his campaign, DaRosa advocated for affordable housing solutions, improved public safety and youth empowerment.
