2025 Boston mayoral election


The 2025 Boston mayoral election was held on November 4, 2025, to elect the mayor of Boston. Because more than two candidates qualified for the ballot, a non-partisan primary election, known in Boston as a preliminary election, was held on September 9, 2025. The election was held concurrently with the 2025 Boston City Council election. Incumbent mayor Michelle Wu successfully ran for re-election to a second term.
Wu and nonprofit executive Josh Kraft advanced to the general election after being the top-two finishers in a preliminary election held on September 9, with Wu receiving approximately 72% of the vote and Kraft receiving approximately 23%. However, on September 11 Kraft announced he was ending his campaign and formally withdrew his name from the ballot on September 12. Kraft's requested withdrawal from the ballot was officially confirmed by the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office on September 15. The withdrawal of a candidate from the general election ballot had been unprecedented in Boston since the city began using its current format for mayoral elections in 1951. Kraft's withdrawal left Wu as the only candidate on the general election ballot, making her the city's first mayor to be unopposed for re-election in a general election since Thomas Menino in 1997. Wu's general election vote share of more than 93% is the greatest received by any Boston mayoral candidate since 1874. The 78,997 votes Wu received in the general election are the second-most received by a Boston mayoral candidate since 1983. The vote share Wu received in the nonpartisan preliminary was the highest received by any candidate since Boston began holding nonpartisan primaries, and the number of votes she received in the preliminary was the third-most.

Candidates

Advanced to general election

Two candidates advanced to the general election after winning the two highest vote totals in the non-partisan preliminary election.

Withdrew after qualifying for general election

Eliminated in preliminary election

Four candidates qualified for the primary ballot, with two advancing to the general election.
The following candidates qualified for inclusion on the preliminary election ballot and did not advance to the general election.

Did not qualify for ballot

  • Alex Alex, restaurant worker
  • Kerry Augustin, member of the Boston City Strong Commission
  • Berry Homer Adams, HVAC technician
  • John Houton, attorney and former assistant corporation counsel of the Boston Treasury department
  • Jorge Mendoza-Iturralde, restaurateur
  • Alex Winston, cryotherapy business owner

Declined

Primary election

Debates and forums

A forum hosted by political reporter Saraya Wintersmith of GBH News was held with Michelle Wu, Josh Kraft, Domingos ReRosa, and Alex Alex on May 15th. On September 3rd, a forum with Michelle Wu and Josh Kraft was held.

Campaign finances

Wu raised $1.8 million for her campaign committee. Kraft's committee raised $6.8 million, a record for a Boston mayoral preliminary campaign. However, $5.5 million of what Kraft raised came from his own personal wealth and only $1.3 came from sources and contributors other than Kraft himself
Kraft's committee spent more than $5.6 million before the primary, while Wu's campaign committee spent more than $1.1 million. The Super PAC Your City, Your Future, supporting Kraft's campaign, spent more than $3.1 million before the primary. Its chief contributors Jim Davis and Michael Rubin, who each gave the PAC $1 million. Bold Boston, a Super PAC supporting Wu, spent more than $850,000.

Campaign and major issues

Kraft has campaigned as being more moderate than the incumbent Wu, who is regarded to be a progressive. Kraft entered the election considered a potentially strong challenger to Wu due to his lengthy philanthropic resume, his lack of political record for her to litigate, as well as his vast personal wealth and connections to wealthy prospective donors from which he could fund his campaign.
Ahead of the preliminary vote, Wu criticized the amount of his own personal wealth that Kraft used to fund his campaign, the vast amount of money Kraft spent on the preliminary, as well as Kraft's lack of full public transparency about the sources from which he derives his $6.3 million annual income. Kraft pledged in February 2025 that, if elected mayor, he would recuse himself "anything that my family's business had in front of the city of Boston".
Ahead of the preliminary, Wu received a broad amount backing from incumbent members of the Boston City Council and local Democratic Party leaders. She also benefited from holding a high popularity rating in Boston. Ahead of the preliminary vote, she had success in tying Kraft to President Donald Trump, who is highly unpopular in Boston. This tactic was regarded to have resonated, in part, due to Kraft's father having had ties to Trump. Wu is regarded to have benefited from having attained newfound prominence nationally as a perceived foil to the Trump administration, defending the city against attacks by the Trump administration. The week prior to the election, the Trump administration's Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Boston over its "sanctuary city" policy. On the day of voting for the primary election, the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security put out a statement announcing a further immigration crackdown in Massachusetts. The Trump administration also levied the threat of deploying the National Guard into the city. Tufts University political scientist Jeffrey M. Berry characterized Wu as having established herself during the Second Trump Administration" as a, "symbol of democratic resistance to the president", which he opined was to the benefit of her mayoral re-election prospects. Kraft has argued Wu's emphasis on Trump is an effort to distract from her own effort.
One of Kraft's main criticisms of Wu was the installation of bike lanes during Wu's mayoralty, with Kraft accusing her administration of having installing too many bike lanes and having done so with an insufficient amount of prior planning. Another of Kraft's top criticisms of Wu was the renovation of White Stadium which Wu has championed, with Kraft characterizing it as expensive as well as unpopular with and detrimental to communities living near the stadium. Wu has countered this by refuting Kraft's allegations of rising costs for the project, and by alleging that Kraft had a conflict of interest against the stadium due to his family's company, the Kraft Group, planning to build a privately-owned soccer stadium in the neighboring city of Everett for their New England Revolution men's team. Kraft also characterized Wu as having insufficiently addressed the city's housing needs in her term as mayor. Overall, Kraft's campaign was characterized as struggling to find a resonant message against Wu, and a week prior to the primary he parted ways with two of his top campaign advisors.

Results

Wu and Kraft's leads over Cappucci and DaRosa was pronounced enough that the Associated Press projected Wu and Kraft's first and second place finishes in the preliminary within eighteen minutes after the election's poll-closing time.
Wu led the vote in all of the city's 22 wards by comfortable margins. Of Boston's 272 precincts, Kraft only led Wu in 9. Some of the precincts where Kraft outperformed her were in Ward 16, regarded to be one of the city's more conservative areas. However, Wu still won a number of precincts in Ward 16, and carried the overall vote in the ward.

Analysis

Wu's 49–point lead over Kraft in the preliminary was described by GBH as a "landslide", The Boston Globe as "staggering" the Dorchester Reporter as a "blowout", and analyst Jon Keller as a "drubbing ". Wu is the first candidate to receive more than 70% of the vote in either round of a Boston mayoral election since the 2001 election.
Jon Keller, writing for WBUR, noted that Wu had carried the vote in Ward 16 precinct 2 by a preliminary-count of 84 to Kraft's 37. Keller described that precinct as being "one of the last remaining pockets of 'old Boston' voters in South Dorchester," and described Wu's strong performance there as, "a warning sign that moderate-to-conservative voters are by no means reflexively anti-Wu."
Numerous political analysts characterized Kraft as having failed to provide voters with a cogent rationale for his candidacy. Numerous analysts also characterized Kraft as having been a poor campaigner, despite the vast financial resources available to his campaign. The Boston Globe journalist Adrian Walker opined that Kraft had run "the most unlikable campaign for mayor in Boston history". Walker characterized Wu, contrarily, as having run a strong campaign and having benefited from positioning herself as a foil against the Trump administration, writing on the eve of the preliminary election,
In a later piece published by The Boston Globe, business leader David D'Alessandro opined that the weak performance of Kraft was less due to any flaws he had as a candidate, and more due to Wu being a strong incumbent,

General election

On September 11, Kraft announced he was ending his campaign. The following day, he filed a request with the elections office to have his name removed from the general election ballot. On September 15, the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office confirmed Kraft properly filed the paperwork by the deadline to remove his name from the ballot. As a result, his name was not listed on the general election ballot. This is the first instance under Boston's current election format that a candidate has withdrawn after advancing to the mayoral election ballot.
DaRosa would have been eligible to replace Kraft as the general election opponent to Wu if the final tally of the preliminary saw him receive at least 3,000 votes. DaRosa announced he would seek a recount of the preliminary in the longshot hope that there had been a several hundred vote undercount of his support in the preliminary that would be sufficient for a recount to potentially increase his vote share to the 3,000 needed for him to be eligible to replace Kraft on the general election ballot, and he began circulating recount petitions. On September 22, after recounts were completed in several wards, it was confirmed that Wu would be unopposed in the general election. Wu is the first candidate unopposed on a mayoral general election ballot since Tom Menino in 1997.

Candidates

;Withdrew from ballot