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Election Night in Boston last week was a good one for incumbents. Mayor Michelle Wu cruised to victory unopposed, but that was hardly her only win: A cadre of her allies on the Boston City Council kept their seats, and that could translate into policy wins.
Here are the key takeaways.
1. In the competitive at-large race, Wu put her hand on the scale and got two-thirds of her wishlist.
All four at-large city councilors, representing all of Boston, handily won re-election. That included Henry Santana, a Wu ally who was seen as most vulnerable to a challenge by Frank Baker, a former District 3 councilor.
Baker, who ran on a promise to bring “balance” to the council, is a centrist who would likely have been a thorn in Wu’s side. (He and Wu previously served on the Boston City Council together.) Baker was endorsed by former Mayor Marty Walsh, whose relationship with Wu has been openly chilly.
In the end, Santana came in 16,000 votes ahead of Baker — more than triple his lead in the September preliminary.
Santana’s win was due, at least in part, to the Wu effect.
In the last few weeks, Santana and Wu appeared together at dozens of campaign and city events. And while Baker out-fundraised Santana $300,000 to $100,000, a super PAC supporting Wu, Bold Boston, spent $175,000 to support Santana’s campaign since the preliminary, state records show.
“She’s proven incredibly effective at endorsements,” Erin O’Brien, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, said of Wu. Santana is “a talented candidate, of course. I don’t mean to take away from him, but my sense is that her base, her train, was activated.”
Santana was one of three candidates the mayor endorsed. Wu-backed City Council President Ruthzee Louijeuene topped the ticket with more votes than any other City Council candidates. Meanwhile, the other candidate Wu endorsed, City Hall official and first-time candidate Alexandra Valdez, came in sixth in the at-large race.
2. Wu keeps a supermajority of allies on the council.
Wu doesn’t have the buzz of a new mayor, but she’ll have a pre-set cabinet and a fresh stamp of approval from voters. In September, she knocked out her only real challenger for mayor, Josh Kraft, in a 49-point romp. And she’ll head back to work with a 13-person council on which only three to four members regularly push back on her.
Larry DiCara, a former Boston city councilor who donated to the Wu, Baker and Santana campaigns this year, actually compared Wu’s political capital to that of former President Lyndon Johnson back in 1964. He had supermajorities in the House and the Senate at the time.
“In the course of a series of months, he pushed through the Voting Rights Act, a civil rights bill, Medicare, aid to education” he said. “immediately, that’s not to suggest that the mayor of Boston has the kind of powers as the president of the United States. But if she wants to do some bold things, immediately’s the time to do them.”
Aside from pushing forward on her first-term priorities, Wu has been tightlipped about her goals for the next four years. At her victory rave Tuesday night, she spoke in generalities, telling supporters she’s focused on making sure Boston is safe, family-friendly, climate-forward and affordable. She also talked about continuing to defend the city from the Trump administration’s funding threats and immigration raids. In an interview with WBUR’s Morning Edition, Wu said she still wants to work with the state to expand free MBTA bus routes, even as federal funding for the pilot runs dry.
“ The residents of Boston want us to keep getting things done, and most of all, they want our city to stand up for who we are and keep moving forward,” Wu told WBUR.
What she didn’t talk about: the heap of challenges on her plate, such as struggles to boost downtown and the tax revenue implications of slumping office building values; improving Boston’s public schools; the ongoing problems at Mass. and Cass; continued opposition to the White Stadium renovation project; and how to navigate a potential 2026 state ballot question to bring back rent control that goes further than her stalled proposal for Boston.
Even with much work to do, Wu may enjoy more cooperation from businesses and other local critics in her second term. Said O’Brien: “You don’t challenge the mayor nearly as much when you think the mayor’s going to be there for a long time.”
3. The one new member of the council may be a newly minted Wu ally.
In the open City Council race to represent Roxbury’s District 7, Rev. Miniard Culpepper beat Said Ahmed – a former track athlete and Boston Public Schools employee – by about 600 votes. The seat was formerly held by Tania Fernandes Anderson, who was arrested and pleaded guilty to taking a financial kickback.
Culpepper is the longtime senior pastor at Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church, a Dorchester institution his grandfather founded. He said he’ll be leaving that post. He previously worked as a lawyer for 27 years at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and served as chief of staff to a former Michigan congresswoman in the 1990s
Though Wu didn’t endorse a District 7 candidate, Culpepper said they have a good relationship and worked together on Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign. Wu described him as a “longtime friend.”
“ In fact, the mayor was the one that called me last night and told me I had won,” Culpepper told WBUR Wednesday. “ We’re not going to agree on everything. We understand that, but where we can get things done for this district, we will.”
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