This is the first time Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has given a state of the city address in the midst of an election year, which may explain the special piquancy this particular speech seemed to have. But while fieriness can be crowd pleasing, and certainly was Wednesday night, it can also come with risks, especially in the current political climate. Here are some of the biggest takeaways from Wu’s address, involving those dynamics and some others as well.
1. Wu’s recent congressional testimony in Washington, D.C. was her de facto reelection kickoff and a political gift that keeps on giving.
While Wu has made it clear that she’s seeking a second term, she hasn’t held an event to formally launch her campaign. But Wednesday’s speech demonstrated that she doesn’t need to — because the campaign effectively started when Wu visited Capitol Hill for a congressional hearing on “sanctuary cities” on March 5 and pushed back vigorously against her Republican interlocutors.
Points made and ideas fleshed out during that testimony were the rhetorical core of Wu’s 2025 State of the City speech. Consider her opening, in which Wu said: “It might have been my voice speaking into the microphone that day, but it was 700,000 voices that gave Congress their answer: This is our city.”
The echo of former Red Sox star David Ortiz’s cri de coeur after the Boston Marathon bombings, albeit without the f-bomb, was impossible to miss: parochial, proprietary, utterly defiant. Or take the close, in which Wu added a hefty dose of Boston exceptionalism to her initial message: “We are the city that leads in the storm, that stands up under pressure … God bless our city, God bless our people, and God save whoever messes with Boston.”
The applause was thunderous. But bear in mind: this swagger will no doubt be noted by the Trump Administration, including immigration czar Tom Homan, who’s previously bragged that he’s coming to Boston and “bringing Hell with me”. Whether Wu’s tone might end up negatively impacting the city she seeks to protect is an open question — and could determine whether this speech is viewed, a few months from now, as a success or a mistake.
2. Josh Kraft wasn’t mentioned, but Wu responded his core argument against her in a slickly produced video.
Kraft, the former president of the New England Patriots Foundation and the Boys & Girls Club of Boston, made a character-based argument against Wu in his campaign kickoff in February, calling her a “leader that just does not listen” and someone who “acts as if she alone has all the answers.”
The crowd entering the MGM Music Hall on Wednesday was treated to a very different picture of Wu. This 14-minute video, which was playing as people walked in and took their seats, basically depicted a city governed from the bottom up, with a variety of Bostonians talking about the city first listening attentively to ideas or concerns and then taking decisive action to implement or address them:
But if Wu really wanted, she could have gone further to demonstrate her “I’m a leader who listens” bona fides.
During a recent appearance on GBH’s Boston Public Radio, for example, the mayor admitted that Boston had moved too quickly and without sufficient regard for unintended consequences as it sought to remake the city’s streetscape. That mea culpa didn’t find its way into Wednesday’s speech. Nor was there any contrition evinced around the ongoing fight over the redevelopment of White Stadium in Franklin Park, which is currently the subject of a trial . Instead, Wu cast it as a simple matter of wanting a better facility for Boston Public Schools athletes, and totally omitted the role that Boston’s new professional women’s soccer team has played in the ongoing fight.
3. Her awareness of the risks of self-incurred setbacks is sharpening.
In her 2024 State of the City speech, Wu announced a new program, BPS Sundays , that give families with kids in Boston’s public schools free access to some of the city’s biggest cultural institutions twice a month for about half the year. It was an inspired idea that turned out to have one big problem: families that live in the city but send their kids to charter, private, and parochial schools or participate in the METCO program weren’t eligible. That, in turn, led to some vocal pushback . Eventually, the program was expanded with a new moniker, Boston Family Days, to feature 3 new cultural institutions and include all Boston families with school-age kids, whether BPS or not.
The move pleased former critics like the Archdiocese of Boston, but a question lingered: why hadn’t the mayor simply avoided controversy by initially rolling out the program in a manner that was both smaller (fewer participating institutions, say, or fewer total free days) and more inclusive, with all school-age kids and families eligible to participate?
Fast forward to now, and Mayor Wu’s announcement — in a press release and then in the State of the City address itself — that Boston Family Days has been expanded even further, to include a whopping 7 new performing arts organizations and 5 new historical sites. This time around, though, all families with school-age kids will have full access to the program from the outset.
It may well be that restricting the new, radically expanded program to BPS families was never under consideration — either because past iterations have performed so well that the requisite benefactors are already on board, or because the politics of a more limited launch have already been tested and found sorely wanting. Whether that’s the case or not, Wu’s current approach suggests she’s learned from the pushback that BPS Sundays initially engendered, and that she’ll be prioritizing inclusion in comparable programs moving forward — which, if you’re an incumbent mayor in the midst of a reelection campaign, is unquestionably the smart way to go.
4. Her excitement for being extremely transportation focused is dampened.
Wu made no mention of the MBTA, free buses, or bike lanes — a radical departure from her first State of the City in 2023 when she praised Boston for “accelerating over two dozen miles of new dedicated bus lanes” and expanding its bike network.
One reason might be because of the recent public discussion on how the dedicated bus and bike lanes have irritated city drivers who see them as barriers to moving heinous traffic a little more smoothly.
As mentioned, Wu recently had to explain the disappearance of bike lane posts and on Boston Public Radio, Wu admitted that the city needs to be “ more reflective ” about how it pursues dedicated lanes moving forward.
Speaking to reporters after her speech, Wu reiterated that her administration is at a point where it’s moving from a “temporary, quick-fix, let’s just get it done mindset to really analyzing what has worked and how we make things permanent in ways that are even better for all users of our roadways.”
5. Baby Mira could not have arrived at a better time.
In the two months that she’s been alive, Mira Wu Pewarski has made her mom the first Boston mayor to deliver a child while in office, appeared before a Congressional panel and has been mentioned by name in a State of the City address.
Beyond being cute, she served as a powerful representation of why Wu is leaning into the idea of Boston being a safe, family-friendly alternative to the gloomy negativity of Washington.
“I want her to grow up in a country that’s admired, not feared; a country stable and safe, not one that feels like it’s coming apart at the seams,” Mayor Wu said, adding that “it’s the version of America that belongs not to kings, but to kin.”
Wu, in tying her hopes for the future of the city to the well-being of her child, positions herself as woman with one of the best reasons to be entrusted with guiding Boston’s future.
