On morning after win, Wu gets to work
Michelle Wu’s first full day as mayor-elect included rounds of smiles, hugs and applause — and the start of questions about what’s to come.
“There’s a new day in City Hall,” the victorious Wu proclaimed to the assembled media in the Eagle Room of the mayor’s offices, where she stood beside Acting Mayor Kim Janey in a press conference. “We were right back to work — we had a great night last night, and back today.”
It might be a new era in Boston politics, but there weren’t a load of answers available right off the bat as Wu on Wednesday met with Janey and prepped to take the reins of the city just 13 days later.
Questions about any cabinet appointees and the transition team were quickly shuffled off. Similarly, a query about whether she’ll make any immediate changes to Janey’s plans to remove encampments in the Mass and Cass area was not met with a direct answer other than some ruminating on “the need to ensure that we are leading with a public health approach and not furthering criminalization,” which doesn’t really distinguish her plans from anything either the proponents and opponents of Janey’s actions have said.
One tidbit Wu did drop is that one of her first priorities will be hiring the cabinet-level position she’s been talking about to coordinate response to the “overlapping crises of substance use, mental health and homelessness,” including the situation at Mass and Cass.
Wu defeated fellow atscheduled large City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-george by a convincing 64% to 36% tally in Tuesday mayor’s race, per the city’s uncertified results. The 36-year-old Roslindale resident will become the city’s 55th elected mayor — and the first one who’s a woman and a person of color.
Wu said she hadn’t yet a meeting with Gov. Charlie Baker. The gov and former Mayor Marty Walsh had a strong working relationship across party lines, and if Wu wants to get some of her more ambitious proposals anywhere near the finish line — think free MBTA rides, rent control or abolishing the BPDA — she’ll need state support.
Wu takes office so quickly because there is no sitting elected mayor, meaning the transition has to come quickly. Indeed, both her and Essaibi-george’s transition teams had been holding weekly meetings with Janey’s administration to ramp up in light of the quick turnaround.
Wu — and Essaibigeorge — got rounds of applause at the day’s brief city council meeting in the Iannella chambers, where both have sat on the council for multiple terms. Wu ran this race as the bigideas progressive, and Essaibi-george as the relative moderate.
Wu and Janey spoke to the media after they had a transition meeting of about 45 minutes. Asked what they touched on, the pair didn’t really get into details much deeper than Janey saying “We talked about staffing, we talked about our love of Boston, our amazing teams.”
One subplot from the election is that Wu will have less unilateral budgetary control than previous mayors. Ballot Question 1, which would give the city council more of a voice in the city budget process that’s currently highly mayor-driven, passed easily.