Gross becomes PAC man
Ex-commish takes helm of political committee
Former Boston Police Commissioner William Gross is at the helm of a new political action committee as the mayoral race heads into the final days before the preliminary election.
Gross is listed as the chair of the “Real Progress Boston Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee,” which filed with the state on Wednesday.
Gross didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but he’s been supporting City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George since the spring, so there’s not too much mystery around the objectives of the PAC.
The committee’s statement of purpose doesn’t highlight any candidate by name, other than to say: “To support candidates for a better Boston who are for Real Progress and to oppose those who are not. To build a better Boston for the best education, safe neighborhoods, economic growth, better jobs, affordable housing and transportation.”
This is far from the first PAC to jump into the race, but they’re usually not chaired by high-profile Boston political figures like Gross, who stepped down as commissioner in February and briefly contemplated a run for mayor himself. Gross didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. One of the political upsides to PACs is that people can donate as much as they want to them. Candidates’ campaign committees have caps of $1,000 a donor each year. PACs have to file reports whenever they spend money, which this one has not done.
There are already multiple other PACs in the race, some of which have been very active in support of candidates, while others haven’t spent a dime. PACs have to operate separately from campaigns.
The PAC in support of City Councilor Andrea Campbell, for instance, spent June and July carpet-bombing the airwaves with nearly $1 million in ad buys, making it the single biggest spender in the entire race up to this point, more than each of the candidates’ campaign accounts by a few hundred thousand dollars.
Over the past month other PACs have started shelling out for Acting Mayor Kim Janey and City Councilor Michelle Wu. PACs have spent nearly $360,000 in support of Wu, with most of that coming in the form of one big $300,000 ad buy last month, and Janey’s now been the beneficiary of more than $275,000 in PAC ad spending, with nearly all of that coming in August.
The August campaign finance reports will come available in the next several days, shedding a bit more light on quite how candidates were spending their money last month, and how much.
The preliminary election, to narrow the field down to the top two, is Sept. 14.