Personal wealth, outside spending take center stage as Michelle Wu and Josh Kraft compete in fiery Boston mayor’s race

Focus is on campaign spending, super PACs, and personal wealth as mayoral candidates battle for support

Boston mayoral candidates Robert Cappucci, Domingos DaRosa, Josh Kraft, and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, left, to right, take take part in a mayoral forum, Wednesday, in Dorchester.MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

There is no shortage of issues to debate in this year’s Boston mayor’s race: housing, schools, renovations to White Stadium, ever-controversial bike lanes.

But so far, the one that seems to be taking center stage is money — who’s giving it, who’s spending it, whose dad has a lot of it, and how much of it is funding attack ads.

An outside super PAC aligned with mayoral challenger Josh Kraft has announced it will spend at least $2.4 million on attack ads against Mayor Michelle Wu. And Kraft, a longtime nonprofit leader and the son of billionaire Patriots owner Robert Kraft, is loaning himself $2 million. These are just the latest developments in a race that has grown increasingly focused not just on campaign funds, but also on broader narratives about wealth and privilege and the two leading candidates’ personal financial backgrounds.

Outside spending and immense private wealth are hardly new concepts in Massachusetts politics. But the sums reported so far could set the city on a course to its most expensive mayor’s race yet.

Amid all the talk of dollars and cents, money has also become a favorite attack line for both candidates. Wu has repeatedly said Boston is “not for sale” as she argues Kraft is a rich carpetbagger trying to buy his way into City Hall. Kraft, meanwhile, has taken aim at Wu over her fiscal stewardship of the city. He has said she should cut Boston’s operating budget, criticized the hundreds of thousands of dollars the city spent preparing for her testimony before Congress, and argued the city is spending too much on the public-private effort to renovate White Stadium.

During a radio appearance Wednesday, Wu took the chance to go after Kraft for the big money coming in to support him.

“We have not experienced in Boston’s history a race of this kind before, with such sums of money pouring in,” Wu said during an appearance on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio.”

Seeking to draw a contrast, the mayor also emphasized her more modest finances.

“I have never in any point of my life or my family’s life, been able to put $2 million of cash into a campaign account,” she said.

Wu’s 2024 tax returns, shared with the Globe on Wednesday, showed she and her husband made just over $184,000 in gross income last year, nearly all from her mayoral salary. Wu’s campaign said the mayor and her husband hold about $450,000 in investment accounts for retirement and college savings, owe about $17,000 in federal student loan debt, and lease a 2025 Honda Prologue. They also own their Roslindale home, a two-family that is assessed at $806,100, though Zillow and Redfin estimate its sale price would be closer to $1 million.

That’s an apparent contrast with Kraft, whose father is reportedly worth $11.8 billion. It’s not clear how much of his family’s wealth Kraft has direct access to, as he has not released his tax returns or shared more details on his investments and assets. A spokesperson this past week said Kraft will release his tax returns “in the near future," and has previously told the Globe his business interests are held in a blind trust.

While Kraft has tried to set his campaign apart from his family’s privileged background, it is undeniable he is benefitting from it. He has acknowledged that his father is probably encouraging his well-to-do friends and business connections to support him, and the $2 million Kraft infused into his campaign is a significant amount for a local race, particularly with several months to go before the election. Before stepping down as the head of the Boys and Girls Club of Boston, Kraft earned nearly $350,000 in fiscal year 2020, public records show. More recently, as head of his family charity, the New England Patriots Charitable Foundation, Kraft did not draw a salary, according to the nonprofit’s 990 reports.

Wu has also attacked Kraft by linking Kraft’s father to his waterfront condo in the North End.

Public records show that in the fall of 2023, an LLC called “Two BW Boston LLC” purchased the $2.4 million condominium where Josh Kraft lives. The address for the LLC is One Patriot Place — Gillette Stadium.

The Kraft campaign called Wu’s attacks dishonest, saying this past week the candidate “purchased his Boston home with his own money,” and he is the “sole owner” of Two BW Boston LLC. Kraft’s campaign did not provide documents showing who was behind the purchase or support his claim that he owns it outright.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday night after a mayoral candidate forum, Kraft defended the decision to invest so much in his own campaign, arguing he needs the money because of the steep odds he faces.

“I’m going against the power of incumbency. Mayor Wu has had four years to raise money. I haven’t, I’ve had four months,” Kraft said, also pointing out his campaign has had to hire a number of staff. Above all, though, Kraft said he made the donation because he believes he can win this race.

“I believe in the campaign,” he said. “Every neighborhood I go in, I hear about it, about the energy and the passion for my candidacy.”

Scott Ferson, a political consultant who worked for Wu’s general election rival in 2021 and is not involved in the race this year, said by putting so much of his own money into his campaign, Kraft is trying to “shock the system.”

“He’s talking to people in Boston who are saying, ‘I don’t think you can win.’ He needs to show he’s moving the needle somehow,” Ferson said.

“It’s more fun than standing in the middle of Comm. Ave. and lighting your money on fire,” he added.

Democrat Shannon Liss-Riordan poured $9.3 million into her unsuccessful bid for state attorney general in 2022, and Republican John Deaton put more than $1 million into his losing campaign for US Senate in 2024. But those were both statewide races, meaning candidates were competing for a much bigger audience than Boston mayoral hopefuls are courting.

By comparison, when Wu last ran for mayor, she raised $2.6 million over the entirety of 2021. Her general election opponent, then-City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, raised $2.7 million that year, including the $250,000 she loaned to her campaign in October 2021, in the final weeks of the race. While Boston mayoral candidates have loaned their campaigns tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, no candidate in recent history has come close to Kraft’s $2 million sum.

Including the hearty infusion from his own coffers, Kraft has already topped the sums Wu and Essaibi George amassed in a full year of campaigning. According to the latest campaign finance reports, in 2025, Kraft has raised more than $965,000, while Wu has raised $919,000. According to state campaign finance regulators, the fund-raising record in a Massachusetts mayor’s race is the $3 million Martin J. Walsh raised in his first successful campaign for mayor in 2013.

The spending this year looks less like Boston’s past contests and more like the 2024 San Francisco mayor’s race, when Levi’s heir Daniel Lurie toppled the incumbent mayor after pouring $9 million of his own money into his campaign. It’s a race Kraft is looking to for lessons.

And that’s to say nothing of spending by super PACs, the outside groups that can raise and spend unlimited sums but are not permitted to coordinate with campaigns they are supporting.

The Kraft-aligned super PAC called “Your City, Your Future” has said it will spend $2.4 million in negative ads against Wu. By contrast, the highest-spending super PAC engaged in the last mayoral race dropped $1.6 million to support Attorney General Andrea Campbell, who was then a mayoral candidate.

“If it continues at this pace, it will definitely be unprecedented,” Doug Rubin, a longtime political consultant who worked for one of Wu’s rivals in the 2021 mayor’s race, said of the PAC spending.

He predicted it could be “just the beginning of a wave of negative attacks.” In campaigns, he said, “once you go up [on television], you don’t come down.”

Money certainly helps, but it hardly guarantees a candidate will win a mayor’s race in Massachusetts. In 2021 and 2023, top spenders won 71 percent of the time, according to research from the Office of Campaign and Political Finance.

Matt Stout of the Globe staff contributed reporting.