Two days after a scorching defeat at the hands of Mayor Michelle Wu, Josh Kraft’s announcement Thursday that he was ending his long-shot City Hall campaign was a kind of victory for the first-time candidate.
Kraft told WCVB-TV that he intended to focus his energy — and $3 million in resources — on organizations aiding in the crisis in the area of the city known as Mass and Cass, or the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard in Boston’s South End neighborhood.
“What I’ll be doing is — the money that I would have needed to get through these next eight weeks of mudslinging — is take that money and some more money, and work with the Gavin Foundation and The Phoenix to fight to take those first steps to find a real solution to the human tragedy and public safety crisis of Mass and Cass, as well as to reenergize a similar program, Operation Exit, which helps people coming home from incarceration not just find jobs, but find careers,” Kraft said.
It was a continuation of a career in philanthropy for the 58-year-old son of billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft that has stretched three decades, primarily at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston.
So while Kraft returns to what effectively has been his life’s work in a part of the city that is fairly screaming for help, all eyes are now on Wu, who romped to victory in Tuesday’s preliminary election, taking 72% of the vote and carrying all 22 of the city’s wards, including Kraft’s home turf in the North End.
In a statement, the Democratic mayor said she respected Kraft’s decision and thanked him “for caring about our city deeply enough to want to make it better.”
“We are going to continue over the next two months and beyond to keep engaging our community members about the critical work in front of us and how we keep making Boston a safe, welcoming home for everyone,” Wu said.
With Boston and the state the focus of intense scrutiny from the Trump White House, and with the region in the throes of a renewed federal immigration enforcement blitz, it was the outcome that some political observers said they hoped they would see.
An exit would make Kraft “look better in the eyes of voters than he already does,” Mary Anne Marsh, a veteran Democratic analyst from Boston, said in an interview Thursday before Kraft made his announcement.
And that would send a message that “given everything that’s going on in Boston, in the state, and this country … from Donald Trump, and all of that, [that] it’s a time for all of us to come together and work together,” Marsh said, adding that Kraft could make it clear he wants Wu to “have the opportunity to do just that.”
Kraft had made addressing the open-air drug market around Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, and crime in the city’s Downtown Crossing neighborhood, one of the main planks of his campaign.
At least one veteran observer said Wu, with her “heavy-handed progressive policies,” deserved to have her feet held to the fire there.
Wu would have liked “nothing better than to see Kraft call it a day, which would truly be a knockout punch that would reverberate nationally,” Scott Van Voorhis wrote for the Contrarian Boston newsletter (paywall), which was published before Kraft’s announcement.
With Kraft’s exit, Wu also would get “a free pass on all those pesky questions and issues the mayor and her administration can’t be bothered to acknowledge, let alone discuss,” he wrote.
Now it’s up to Wu to show city voters that her approach to Mass and Cass, which has stubbornly defied resolution, is the more effective one.
Wu’s plan calls for using “all levers” of city government, in partnership with the state and nonprofits, “to end congregate substance use in Boston and the criminal activity that supports it,” she wrote to South End residents in a letter in June.
A key part of that plan was dismantling the tent encampment on Atkinson Street, a side street near Mass and Cass, in November 2023.
Today, the city’s approach is continuously adapting to meet the ongoing issues of group outdoor drug use that have spread to the South End, Downtown Boston and Boston Common, Roxbury, and parts of Dorchester and South Boston.
If elected, Kraft said he would have boosted police enforcement of public drug consumption, trespassing, tent camping and other quality-of-life crimes. Prosecutions would be handled in specialty courts, aiming to drive people into recovery programs rather than prison.
Kraft also would have revived the Community Syringe Redemption Program, a needle collection program supported by pandemic relief money that encouraged people to return used needles for a monetary refund. Funding for the program ended last year.
City voters will never know if Kraft’s approach would have worked. However, with his exit from the field, Wu will have to fulfill her promise to finally address one of the city’s trouble spots.
She could also enlist Kraft, his community connections, and his resources in that effort.
It would be the kind of across-the-divide cooperation people say they want to see from their leaders. And it could be a win for the whole city.
Read more analysis from John L. Micek
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