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Josh Kraft reportedly decides to challenge Wu for the mayor’s office
Kraft, who currently leads the New England Patriots Foundation, is reportedly planning to announce his campaign in February.
When Boston Mayor Michelle Wu runs for reelection this year, she will reportedly be facing an opponent with a last name familiar to many New England sports fans: Josh Kraft.
Kraft, the second son of billionaire Patriots owner Robert Kraft, had been rumored to be mulling a run against Wu for months now. On Tuesday, both The Boston Globe and Politico reported that Kraft is indeed gearing up for a mayoral campaign. He is reportedly planning to formally announce the campaign sometime in February.
Wu recently gave birth to her third child and is not planning on taking a formal maternity leave. She has not officially launched her reelection campaign, but has said publicly numerous times that she plans to seek a second term this fall.
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It is unclear whether Wu will face any other serious challengers aside from Kraft. City Councilor Ed Flynn was reportedly weighing a bid for mayor himself, but news surfaced earlier this month that he had decided to run for reelection representing District 2 instead.
As the current president of the New England Patriots Foundation, Kraft oversees his family’s philanthropic efforts. He also is the chair of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, a Roxbury-based civil rights group. Kraft previously worked with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, spending 30 years with the organization. He was president and CEO for 12 of those years.
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Kraft bought a $2 million North End condo in 2023, according to the Globe. He previously lived in Chestnut Hill, which is in Newton. Advisors of his were recently seen checking out office spaces in Nubian Square that could potentially become his campaign headquarters, Politico reported.
Kraft has not commented publicly on the reports circulating about his potential campaign. While he has never held elected office, Kraft curates a social media presence similar to many politicians, full of posts showing him interacting with various community groups and posing with a variety of workers and volunteers around Boston. He congratulated Wu on the birth of her child in a recent post.
Could Kraft unseat an incumbent mayor?
Wu became the first woman, person of color, and mother to be elected mayor in 2021 after building her political skills on City Council. An outspoken progressive, she remains popular well into her term. Under her leadership last year, Boston set a record for the lowest number of homicides since 1957. She highlights efforts to make Boston more welcoming to families, such as expanding a program that offers free museum admission to all students and getting more young people than ever to participate in the city’s paid youth summer jobs program. Wu also says she is making an “unprecedented level of investment” in housing affordability, a major concern for residents.
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But there are potential areas where she could be susceptible to attacks from Kraft. Wu admitted mistakes and canceled a plan to move the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science to West Roxbury after championing the project for the better part of a year. Her ambitious plan to renovate White Stadium in Franklin Park is moving forward despite opposition from some locals and concerns over the project’s growing price tag.
Plus, Wu has a sometimes-thorny relationship with the city’s business community, as evidenced by the debate surrounding her plan to shift the city’s property tax burden onto commercial real estate. The mayor spent much of 2024 throwing her weight behind the plan, only for it to collapse in the Senate. She is trying again this spring, but homeowners are already reckoning with higher taxes and could blame Wu for the spike.
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