Josh Kraft speaks to reporters and supporters as he launches his run for mayor of Boston at the Prince Hall Grand Lodge in Dorchester on Feb. 4, 2025. Photo by Sam Doran | State House News Service
Say what you want about Josh Kraft – and there’s certainly a lot to say.
Kraft, who suspended his campaign for mayor Thursday night, was a first-time candidate with a lot to learn about the game and art of politics.
He came across as awkward in his ads as he was in person, looking very much like the decent, well-meaning, but politically inexperienced nonprofit executive that he is.
And while he may have hired very capable political consultants, whatever Kraft’s game plan was – and that wasn’t always clear – it clearly didn’t work.
In last Tuesday’s preliminary election, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu walked away with 72 percent of the vote and a crushing victory over Kraft, who came in at a distant second with 23 percent.
But Kraft still ran a serious campaign.
He pushed Wu on real issues like the dramatic decline in housing production, the controversial $200 million redevelopment of White Stadium and the never-ending Mass & Cass drug, homelessness and crime catastrophe.
A Voice for Better Housing Policies
In the video back in February announcing his candidacy, Kraft put housing – and the slump in production of new homes, apartments and condos under Wu – at the center of his campaign.
“I care that middle-class families are squeezed by the cost of housing,” Kraft said. “My number-one priority is to lower the cost of housing by building more housing,” adding that Boston “ranks near the bottom” of all cities in the country in housing starts.
It also had the virtue of being a real issue, which is not always the case in political campaigns, where distortion and frivolity often are the order of the day.
Boston issued building permits for just 852 new residential units during the first six months of 2025, according to city numbers.
It marked the worst start since at least 2018 and a 27 percent drop from 2024’s anemic numbers.
Nor was he wrong in pointing the finger at the Wu administration’s affordable housing and energy efficiency mandates for new projects.
By contrast, he called for reducing the affordable housing requirement back down to 13 percent of all units in a new project, or back where it was in the Walsh administration.
“Over the past three years, new housing starts have fallen off a cliff,” Kraft said in a statement near the start of the race. “Living in the city of Boston should not be a luxury item and something that is only available to those that can afford it, but under Mayor Wu that is the direction we are headed.”
Pressed the Mayor on Key Topics
Kraft also raised legitimate questions about Wu’s ambitious joint venture with Boston Legacy, a startup women’s pro soccer franchise to replace decrepit White Stadium with a $200 million stadium and school athletic complex.
Under the deal, the city has agreed to split the cost of the project with the team and its investors.
And the city’s share of the project had already doubled in cost when Kraft, in June, cited a leaked City Hall memo to argue another big price hike was on the way.
One that would push the city’s costs from around $100 million now to $172 million.
Wu at first denied that the numbers came from the city at all, before acknowledging that they were part of what she characterized as the worst-case cost scenario.
Scott Van Voorhis
Not long after, the mayor said the final costs for the new soccer stadium wouldn’t be ready until the end of the year – long after voters have gone to the polls.
Kraft also pressed the mayor on her handling of the Mass and Cass issue, pushed his own alternative rent control plan and warned residential taxes would be going up again amid the collapse of office tower values.
Maybe it was all too wonky, with a political novice like Kraft unable to talk about weighty and complex issues like these in ways that would connect with the average voter.
Kraft also had the bad luck to face a rising political star in Wu, who made herself one of the leading national figures of the anti-Trump coalition thanks to her feisty testimony before a GOP congressional panel.
But while Kraft’s mayoral fizzled out even before he got to November, he has no reason to feel ashamed at how he conducted himself or the issues he campaigned on.
And that is definitely not always the case in politics.
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist and publisher of the Contrarian Boston newsletter; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
