In a debate during the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, the candidates were asked to name the most “effective” Democratic politician in America right now. Both Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander said Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. They’re right. It’s hard to measure most effective, but Wu leads in a principled, practical, and yes, popular way that should be a model for Democrats in Washington and across the country in the Trump era.
Black Lives Matter, the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren presidential campaigns, and other movements and events created a resurgent American left from 2015-2021. And that resurgence catapulted many progressives and leftists into powerful political roles. Some have been very successful, such as former Consumer Finance Protection Bureau director Rohit Chopra and former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan.
But as the travails of Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, St. Louis’s Tishaura Jones, San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, and others have shown, being a progressive mayor or district attorney is particularly challenging. These politicians ran campaigns pledging to rein in the police, wealthy developers, and other entrenched blocs in their cities—but then found those establishment forces too powerful to overcome in office.
But Wu has figured it out. Since being elected mayor in 2021 after seven years as a member of the Boston City Council, Wu has accomplished a lot: fare-free buses in some parts of the city; a big expansion of public preschool; new limits on the use of fossil fuels to power city-owned buildings; the development of thousands of units of new housing; a new contract with the police union that makes it easier to fire officers who commit crimes.
She has also managed her political brand smartly. Her approval rating is around 60 percent. Josh Kraft, one of the sons of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, is running against Wu, whom he views as too liberal. But Kraft has gained little traction because the 40-year-old Wu is so well-liked.
And over the last few months, as the Trump administration has taken a number of steps to crack down on blue states and cities, Wu has become a national voice. Congressional Democrats seem wary of defending immigrants, cities, universities, federal workers or anything else that swing voters in Wisconsin may not like. Not Boston’s mayor.
“Congressman, respectfully, I’m the mayor of Boston. I don’t get to decide who comes into our country and where they go after that,” she told a Republican lawmaker during a GOP congressional hearing in March designed to bash big cities over the country’s immigration challenges. “Our job is to keep people fed and healthy and safe when they arrive in our city, and we do that in order to make sure that everyone across our community is safe. Resources are strained. Please do your job and be part of passing bipartisan legislation.”
Last week, after Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter demanding cities cooperate with ICE efforts to mass deport immigrants, Wu responded with a press conference flanked by other Boston leaders. “Stop attacking our cities to hide your administration’s failures,” Wu said. “Unlike the Trump Administration, Boston follows the law. And Boston will not back down from who we are and what we stand for.”
Why has Wu been successful in a way that other progressive local leaders have not? First of all, Boston is probably one of the easier places to lead from the left. Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and other major cities are dominated by Democrats, but many of the donors and politicians are moderate figures more interested in maintaining the status quo than changing it. In contrast, truly progressive ideas and people have long been ascendant in Boston. Wu served on the city council with Ayanna Pressley, who has gone on to become one of the leading progressives on Capitol Hill. The mayor worked on Elizabeth Warren’s first U.S. Senate campaign in 2012.
“She has a strong base of allies on the council,” Jonathan Cohn, the policy director of Progressive Massachusetts, told me. “The Boston City Council had a series of elections in the late 2010s/early 2020s in which it became more female, more diverse, and more progressive.”
Beyond its political climate, Boston is arguably an easier big city to run than some others. It’s around 760,000 people—far smaller than New York (8 million) or Chicago (3 million.) Even before Wu took office, its murder rate was much lower than other cities.
Secondly, Wu is very skilled in the nuts and bolts, non-ideological parts of politics and conveys real interest in such details. That likely appeals to residents who care more about their garbage being picked up on time than the mayor’s responses to Trump. The mother of three says one of her goals is making Boston the most family-friendly city in the country. Her administration has created a program allowing kids in grades K-12 to visit many of the city’s museums for free. She’s avoided the logistics blunders of other mayors, such as Los Angeles’s Karen Bass, who was out of the country when wildfires first hit her city earlier this year.
Wu, like Mamdani and other progressive pols, has walked back from more anti-police rhetoric in 2020-21 that annoyed white moderate Democrats and Republicans and also didn’t resonate with rank and file African Americans and Latinos, even though they are wary of police brutality. She dropped 2021 her campaign trail promises to reduce the city’s police budget and get rid of its intelligence department, which the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts says does improper surveillance of activist groups.
I am not sure these are the right policy decisions, but not having an antagonistic relationship with city police is probably required to survive as a progressive mayor. Wu won the endorsement of Boston’s largest police union in March. The city’s already low crime rate has dropped even more during her tenure, and Wu has smartly leaned into that, describing Boston as the “safest major city in America.” (Crime is dropping in cities across the country, suggesting Wu’s policies aren’t the sole explanation for the dip.)
Third, and most importantly, Wu has core values. Many center-left Democratic mayors are somewhat effective at managing their cities but make little lasting impact because they don’t believe in much beyond having a prestigious job and appeasing the police and business community in their cities to keep it. In contrast, Wu is essentially a city-level Elizabeth Warren, standing up for average people in their interests and skeptical of the wealthy and big business. She is willing to push for progressive policies such as greater rent stabilization that require (and often fail to get) approval from the Massachusetts state legislature, which is dominated by cautious, centrist Democrats.
And while national Democrats claim moving to the right on issues on race and identity is required electorally and have therefore walked away from forceful defenses of transgender Americans, immigrants, African Americans and other minority groups, Wu has remained steadfast. “All over the country, people are feeling the weight of a federal administration that’s attacking our sources of strength—the same people and purpose that make Boston great: public servants and veterans; immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community; the institutions that conduct groundbreaking research and provide lifesaving care,” Wu said in a speech earlier this year.
I should be clear—Michelle Wu is not a savior, and her leadership approach may not work everywhere. Mayors have limited power. Boston remains a very expensive city that would be difficult for many Americans to move to and still has an enormous gap between its wealthy and its poor, who are disproportionately people of color. We are in a country with a dictatorial leader, so it’s sadly possible that Wu criticizing this administration and not complying with its edicts lands her in jail or somehow otherwise punished. And a person with her pro-immigrant and pro-inclusion politics perhaps can’t win a presidential election or a U.S. Senate race in a swing state.
But we shouldn’t ignore her successes either. Mayors have to deal with crime, housing, education, job creation, and every other problem—and actually get things done in a way that members of Congress and even most governors don’t. And whether we call them progressive, liberal, or something else, we need a Democratic Party with leaders who are fighting to defend the political rights and freedoms of every person while trying to make sure the economy works for everyone.
It’s not saving democracy, fighting oligarchy, or ensuring affordability. It’s all of the above. That’s what Michelle Wu is doing in Boston. Zohran Mamdani thinks she’s a model leader—and so should the rest of the Democratic Party.
The post This Democrat Proves You Can Be Principled, Effective—and Popular appeared first on New Republic.
