Only 16% Of Boston's Registered Voters Cast Ballots Supporting Wu's Re-Election As Boston's Mayor?

The city of Boston, Massachusetts is still one of the largest cities in the United States which has failed to ever, historically, elect a Black man as Boston's mayor, although around 25 percent of Boston's residents are Black.

But, as a result of a Sept. 9, 2025 election to determine who will occupy the Mayor's office in Boston City Hall between January 2026 and January 2030--in which only 66,000 of Boston's 422,000 registered voters apparently voted--Boston's current mayor, a former Harvard Law School student and protegee of former Harvard Law School Professor and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Michelle Wu, was re-elected.

Yet Boston Mayor Wu is neither a politically progressive African American man, a democratic socialist, a pro-rent freeze or pro-rent rollback advocate, or an endorser of the BDS campaign?

And although Wu apparently attracted 121,000 registered Boston voters less in Boston's September 2025 municipal election than the 187,000 registered Boston voters 2024 Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris attracted in Boston's November 2024 election, in Boston's November 2025 follow-up "election", Wu will apparently be the only candidate whose name will be listed on the ballot?

One reason around 84 percent of Boston's registered voters may have failed to vote for Wu's re-election in Boston's Sept. 9, 2025 mayoral election may have been, as the Bay State Banner weekly newspaper noted in an article that appeared in its Jan. 30, 2025 issue:

"Wu...has broken with many...progressive policies...including a push to cut spending on the police department and redirect funding to programs and city departments that prevent crime. In last year's budget negotiations...progressive-leaning majority [of Boston City Council] called for a $3 million cut to the [Boston Police] department's $454.9 million budget, with funding redirected to the Boston Center for Youth and Families, fire and transportation departments...Wu vetoed the amendments to the budget..."

And in a city in which over 60 percent of all residents are economically insecure tenants and more than 59 percent of all Black Bostonians renting market-rate Boston apartments in 2023 were still paying more than 30 percent of their incomes each month on housing costs, no form of rent control has yet been restored in Boston, as of October 2025--despite over 42,000 households in Boston being on the Boston Housing Authority's waiting list for public housing units in 2025.

Also, during Boston Mayor Wu's administration the average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in Boston increased by over 25 to 30 percent between January 2022 and October 2025 and, according to the Apartments.com website:

"As of October 2025, the average rent in Boston, MA is $3,453 per month. This is 112% higher than the national average rent price of $1,630/month, making Boston one of the most expensive cities in the US. When you rent an apartment in Boston, you can expect to pay about...$3,453 for a one-bedroom apartment..."

In addition, under Mayor Wu's administration in Boston's City Hall, over 16 percent of all Boston residents and over 12 percent of all Boston families still have below poverty-level annual incomes, according to the 2025 edition of The World Almanac and Book of Facts.

The economic situation of elderly tenants of all racial backgrounds who still live in Boston, especially, has apparently worsened under Mayor Wu's administration. As the Fall 2025 issue of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council's Senior Action Leader newsletter noted:

"Many of Boston's older adults are on extremely low fixed incomes, with 21 percent of Boston residents age 65 or older living below the poverty level. Among Boston households led by these seniors more than a third (35 percent) are severely cost-burdened: approximately 10,000 senior households spend more than half their modest income on housing. At the same time, waiting lists for subsidized affordable housing are long...Approximately 10,000 seniors 65 and older are on the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) waitlist today."

In addition, in the absence of either a rent freeze or rent rollback in Boston under Mayor Wu's administration, around 1,600 Boston tenant households are still being legally evicted each year by their Boston landlords who use Boston housing court legal proceedings to evict these tenants; and, according to the Wu administration's press release of June 14, 2024, which finally disclosed the results of its Annual Homeless Census of Jan. 31, 2024, despite "the City" receiving "more than $47 million from the US Office of Housing and Urban Development [HUD]" to provide housing to households experiencing homelessness , "the number of families newly experiencing homelessness in Boston...increased by 44.4 percent from...2020 to 2023."

So, not surprisingly, prior to Boston's September 9, 2025 mayoral election campaign, the Wu administration apparently did not release the results of its Annual Homeless Census of late January/early February 2025--perhaps because its 2025 Annual Homeless Census likely also indicated yet another dramatic increase in the number of families experiencing homelessness since Boston Mayor Wu's 2022 inauguration event?

One reason Boston Mayor Wu failed to support a rent freeze and/or rent rollbacks for Boston tenants, failed to prioritize restoring a rent control system in Boston during her first term as Boston's mayor, appointed to a "Rent Stabilization Advisory Committee" members affiliated with real estate industry firms opposing rent control restoration, and only proposed enacting a "rent stabilization" ordinance that would still allow Boston landlords to raise rents by 10 percent annually in some years and would fail to regulate rents of residential units built after 2012, may have been because the Wu campaign committee deposited a significant number of $1,000 individual campaign contributions between 2022 and 2025 from individuals affiliated with real estate industry firms opposing rent control restoration in Boston.

Between Jan. 1, 2022 and Sept. 30, 2025, for example, Boston Mayor Wu's campaign committee deposited 2,623 individual contributions of $1,000 each--totaling over $2.6 million. And $1,000 campaign contributions came from individuals affiliated with special real estate industry corporate interests like New England Development, Elkus Manfredi Architects, Tremont Real Estate Group, Berkeley Investment, Core Investment, The Copley Group, Samuels & Associates, Rubicon Real Estate LLC, Chestnut Hill Realty of Brookline, Beacon Residential Management, etc..

In addition, only 704 of the 1,795 individual campaign contributions of $1,000 each--totaling over $1.7 million--deposited by Wu's campaign committee between Jan. 1, 2022 and March 25, 2025 came from Boston residents; while, during this same period, Wu's campaign committee deposited $370,000 in $1,000 campaign contributions from individuals who--while living in Brookline, Newton, Cambridge, Weston and Wellesley and not in Boston--have a special interest in wanting to undemocratically determine the political direction of a City of Boston municipal government--which purportedly acts in the interest of residents of Boston? By September 2025, around 56 percent of all individual campaign contributions deposited by Wu's campaign committee came from non-residents of Boston and around 41 percent of all individual campaign contributions deposited by Wu's campaign committee were individual contributions of $1,000.

The "Bold Boston Independent Expenditure PAC", which spent $1,052,622 to support Wu's re-election as Boston's mayor also deposited a $25,000 campaign contribution from a Beacon Residential Management real estate firm executive named Howard Cohen, of Newton, Massachusetts, on June 23, 2025

Besides failing to endorse the BDS campaign during her first term as Boston's mayor, when Emerson College’s then- president, Digital Health Impact Inc. Founder and former Dean of the University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Administration Jay Bernhardt, asked Boston Mayor Wu to break-up an anti-Gaza genocidal war and Palestinian solidarity encampment in the 2B Boylston Place Alley at Emerson College in late April 2024, Wu authorized BPD officers to arrest 118 protesters on April 25, 2024. So, not surprisingly, on Sept. 30, 2025 Boston Mayor Wu's campaign committee deposited two individual campaign contributions, of $1,000 each, from a former Emerson College president, Boston Foundation President Lee Pelton; apparently given or deposited after the only previously competing candidate on Boston's November 2025 mayoral election ballot, Billionaire Josh Kraft (a son of a former pro-IDF Columbia University billionaire donor and New England Patriots football team owner Robert Kraft) announced he was ending his "campaign" to unseat Wu as Boston's mayor in January 2026.

And, coincidentally, Wu’s campaign committee also had previously deposited a $1,000 individual campaign contribution from Emerson College Trustee Steven Samuels on June 24, 2024, another $1,000 individual campaign contribution from Emerson College Trustee Samuels’s Samuels & Associate business partner, Joe Sklar (a resident of Brookline) on June 20, 2024 and another $1,000 campaign contribution from Emerson College Trustee Samuels’s Samuels & Associates business associate, Peter Sougarides (a resident of Walpole) on June 28, 2024; as well as depositing a $1,000 individual campaign contribution from ADL funder Paul Egerman and a $1,000 campaign contribution from ADL funder Joanne Egerman, on Dec. 16, 2024. In addition, yet another $1,000 campaign contribution from ADL funder Paul Egerman (who was also a treasure of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren's unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign for awhile) and yet another $1,000 campaign contribution from ADL funder Joanne Egerman were also deposited on July 28, 2025 by Wu's campaign committee

Historically, Boston Mayor Wu’s campaign committee had previously also deposited 8 individual contributions, totaling $8,000, from Paul Egerman and Joanne Egerman--whose Paul and Joanne Egerman Family Charitable Foundation has given over $1 million in tax-exempt grant money since 2014 to the Anti-Defamation League [ADL]; which falsely accuses U.S. antiwar student protesters, who oppose the U.S. government-armed IDF’s war against Palestinian civilians in Gaza and elsewhere, of being “anti-Semitic.”

And, in addition, prior to Wu’s first election as Boston’s current mayor in November 2021, ADL funder Paul Egerman (who is a resident of Weston, Massachusetts, not of Boston) also gave a $50,000 individual campaign contribution on Aug. 11, 2021 to the Boston Turnout Independent Expenditure PAC; which, between May 10, 2021 and Sept. 7, 2021, spent over $332,000 supporting Boston City Councilor Michelle Wu’s 2021 mayoral candidacy.

So it still doesn't seem likely that Boston will have a mayor in 2026 who endorses BDS, calls for a rent freeze and/or rent rollbacks for Boston's tenant majority in 2026 or prioritizes using City of Boston funds to restore rent control in Boston during the rest of this decade.