YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is Boston Cooked?

The assessment case is ongoing, and it’s just one illustrative example among many of Mayor Wu’s broader approach to governance: prioritize the interests of your supporters (whether they be voters or private interest groups) above the economic health of the city and the rule of law within it.

In the narrow sense of winning elections, this approach is working. Wu beat her 2021 mayoral opponent by 28 percentage points and her 2025 opponent by 49. In the latter race, Wu spent almost no time discussing Boston’s stagnant housing production, dismal educational outcomes,2 or worsening crime situation. Instead, she chose to make her opposition to President Trump’s budget cuts and immigration enforcement the centerpiece of her campaign.

Playing to your base while neglecting the broader health of the city isn’t new in Boston; it was the defining element of James Michael Curley’s four non-consecutive mayoral terms.3 Curley, an Irish populist, used the power of the office to make life as unpleasant as possible for his predominantly English opponents in the hope that they would emigrate to the suburbs, thereby leaving him with a more favorable electorate. In the process, business activity dried up and the city was driven to the brink of bankruptcy; its recovery took decades of concerted work by city and state leadership.

Wu, who studied economics under Ed Glaeser, author of the famous paper that formalized the “Curley effect”, is no doubt aware of this history, yet4 her approach to governance is remarkably close to Curley’s: help your friends, punish your enemies, and don’t worry too much about where the city will be a decade or two from now.

Ultimately, this is on the voters who choose to enable Wu.