The Michelle Wu who ran for mayor in 2021 used her platform to call for a municipal Green New Deal and a free T. She had recently advocated for a 10 percent cut to the Police Department budget, and said she would refuse campaign contributions from police officers and police unions.
The Wu seeking reelection in 2025 has slammed the brakes on bus and bike lanes and proposed increasing the Police Department budget every year she has been in office. The words “Green New Deal” rarely pass her lips anymore. And she has touted the endorsement of both the city’s biggest police union and District Attorney Kevin Hayden, who just two years ago she snubbed in favor of a more progressive candidate.
They say politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. As she runs for a second term, Wu has left behind her most flowery oratory. The progressive dreamer who swept into office four years ago on grand promises is striking a different tone this year, emphasizing modest progress she has made toward those lofty goals and embracing constituencies she once alienated. It’s a well-worn path for aspirational candidates later constrained by the practical and political limits of running a city.
“She ran as an outsider-slash-reformer, and she ended up governing as an insider, perhaps more of an insider than even Tom Menino. It was shocking to people,” said Ford Cavallari, chairman of the Alliance of Downtown Civic Organizations, referring to the former mayor known for his mastery over the mechanics of city government. Cavallari supported Wu in 2021, but remains undecided this year as Wu faces a challenge from nonprofit executive Josh Kraft.
Aspects of Wu’s record as mayor have disappointed some of her most ardent supporters on the left, even as others argue that she remains committed to their progressive causes.
“Many of her stances really completely changed when she became mayor,” said Fatema Ahmad, executive director of the Boston-based Muslim Justice League, commenting on Wu’s public safety record. Ahmad said she was disappointed that Wu increased the police budget, supported a controversial gang database, and supported police when they dismantled a pro-Palestinian protest by Emerson students. “She ran as being progressive on these issues, and it’s not even just about not delivering, but actually about doing the opposite.”
In an interview with the Globe, Wu insisted her priorities have not changed, even if her pitch as an incumbent mayor sounds different from her tone four years ago as a first-time mayoral candidate in an open race. She said her administration has kept her progressive campaign promises, including by signing a new police contract that allows the city to fire officers accused of serious crimes and bars them from appealing those dismissals through arbitration.
“I stand by the same values, principles, goals,” Wu said. On police reform in particular, she added, “we have gotten things done. We have delivered together on the promises that I made.”
It’s thanks to that work, Wu said, that she this year is touting police union support, not rebuffing it.
Of course, the political landscape is also very different this year. Wu is focused on beating back attacks from the Trump administration and also facing a challenge from the well-funded Kraft, son of billionaire Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who is positioning himself as a more business-friendly alternative. Kraft has come down to Wu’s right on a number of issues, pledging, for example, to immediately pause the construction of bike lanes.
In her first term, Wu has made strides on many progressive causes, tightening environmental standards for buildings and requiring more affordable housing in new developments. She also had a virtually unprecedented amount of money — nearly $560 million in federal COVID relief funds — to direct toward her priorities, and spent almost half of those dollars on new affordable housing units. But many of her other signature plans, such as rent control, have stalled for lack of support on Beacon Hill, and this time around, they do not appear as central to her campaign pitch. Four years ago, she ran on a broad rallying cry to “free the T”; this year, she touts her successful effort to make three bus lines free.
For many Wu fans, her first term has been cause for celebration — look no further than the polls showing her leading her opponents by a wide margin. Many who support her progressive agenda praised the strides she’s made, and said they never question her devotion to issues such as the climate crisis.
Under Wu, “progress is being made in Boston that I don’t see” elsewhere, said Larry Chretien, executive director of Green Energy Consumers Alliance.
“She’s committed to tangible actions, and she’s so accessible,” Chretien said. “She makes herself available to those of us who want her to do more. She doesn’t hide from us.”
In some ways, analysts said, Wu is marking the natural evolution of any political career. First-time mayoral candidates pitch a sweeping new vision; incumbents have to run on continuity, not change.
“When you’re not the incumbent, you’re presenting yourself very aspirationally to the voters: ‘What do I believe in?’ ” said Scott Ferson, a Democratic strategist who worked for Wu’s opponent in 2021 and is not involved in this year’s mayoral race. “Reelections are very different. . . . The number one question on voters’ minds is, how have you been as mayor?”
“The incumbent problem — and it’s not unique to Michelle Wu — is that people who vote for you, who are excited about you, always want you to go further than you’re able to go when you’re governing,” Ferson added.
In some cases, activists say, they want Wu to go exactly as far as she said she would go during her first campaign.
For example: At a candidate forum in 2021, Wu said she supported long-sought increases to the pensions of retired city employees. But last summer, the Wu administration pushed the city’s retirement board to oppose the raise, calling it financially imprudent given disappointing returns from the city‘s pension investment portfolio.
The board ultimately voted against the increase.
It felt like “a betrayal,” said Elissa Cadillic, cochair of the City of Boston United Retirees and president of AFSCME Local 1526, the local Boston public library employees union.
“It was going back on her word,” said Cadillic, who said she had always voted for Wu. “It just goes against what a lot of us thought she stood for.”
Wu has also shifted on the issue of an elected school committee. During her mayoral campaign, she supported moving from an appointed body to a hybrid, partially elected panel, but she cooled to the idea after taking office. In February 2023, Wu opposed even adopting a hybrid model, arguing it would introduce too much instability during a critical time for the district. She vetoed a proposal for a fully elected panel when the City Council presented it to her later that month.
“I wasn’t shocked, but I was just deeply disheartened,” said Krista Magnuson, a 47-year-old Boston Public Schools mother and cochair of Bostonians for an Elected School Committee, which put the question on the ballot in 2021. Nearly 79 percent of voters approved of the measure — an overwhelming majority that Magnuson hoped would persuade the mayor.
But perhaps no issue has seen a more dramatic shift than public safety, Wu critics said.
“A lot of activists and colleagues of mine are kind of confused,” said Alexandria Onuoha, who advocated for racial justice and police reform in 2020 as a founder of the nonprofit Black Boston. “[Wu] had a desire to kind of demilitarize law enforcement, but it’s difficult to do that when she continuously increases the budget. … You’re basically saying, ‘I support this.’ ”
Others have also called out the mayor for funding a controversial police intelligence-gathering operation called the Boston Regional Intelligence Center — even though she opposed it as a city councilor.
“The BPD‘s point system for designating people as gang members is arbitrary and unreliable,” said Kade Crockford, the ACLU of Massachusetts’ director of technology and justice programs, in a statement. “At a time when the federal government is sending people to a foreign gulag on the strength of such specious allegations, it’s more important than ever before that the BPD minimizes the unintended harm caused by its policies and practices.”
Wu has justified the shift by arguing that new oversight and regulations would ensure accountability at the center. She also points to her investments in public health-focused initiatives to reduce violence and increase support for neighborhoods of color, including starting a summer evening event series, programming for teenagers and young adults during times when the city sees spikes in crime, guaranteeing summer jobs for eligible BPS students, and launching a new workforce development, life skills, and violence prevention program for at-risk youth and young adults.
On other issues, some of the phrases that all but defined Wu’s 2021 bid — “Green New Deal,” “free the T” — have seemed to disappear from her campaign rhetoric. Wu did not specifically mention the Green New Deal at her reelection campaign announcement, nor in the last several State of the City addresses.
Some advocates said they do not believe the mayor’s commitment to combating the climate crisis has dimmed, even if her rhetoric has shifted. Hessann Farooqi, executive director of the nonprofit Boston Climate Action Network, called Boston’s leadership “one of the most pro-climate-action city administrations anywhere in the country.”
For others, though, the change in Wu’s language is a warning sign.
Many people are “very upset” that Wu has apparently dropped the Green New Deal label, said Daniel Faber, the former director of the Northeastern Environmental Justice Research Collaborative and a local climate activist. “She’s doing a lot of great things, but the feeling is that she ran as a Green New Deal champion, and she should not back down in the face of political pressure. Because the danger is that it can discourage and even disempower those constituencies which helped get her elected.”
As she seeks a second term, Faber questioned, “Is she going to play it safe, or is she going to be bold?”
Emma Platoff can be reached at emma.platoff@globe.com. Follow her @emmaplatoff. Niki Griswold can be reached at niki.griswold@globe.com. Follow her @nikigriswold.