| Boston City Council tenure of Michelle Wu | |
| Office1: | President of the Boston City Council |
| Term Start1: | January 2016 |
| Term End1: | January 2018 |
| Predecessor1: | Bill Linehan |
| Successor1: | Andrea Campbell |
| Office: | Member of the Boston City Council at-large |
| Term Start: | January 4, 2014 |
| Term End: | November 16, 2021 |
| Predecessor: | John R. Connolly Felix G. Arroyo |
| Successor: | Erin Murphy |
Michelle Wu, a Democrat,[1] served as a member of the Boston City Council from January 2014 until becoming mayor of Boston in November 2021. Wu was first elected to the City Council in November 2013, and was re-elected three times (in 2015, 2017, and 2019). In 2016 and 2017, Wu served as the Council’s president.
Wu won positive recognition for her work as a city councilor. Wu served on the Council at a time when the body acted to wield greater influence than earlier iterations had in preceding decades. The council acted particularly bolder during her own tenure as its president. Wu was considered to be a progressive member. As a councilor, Wu authored several ordinances that were enacted as law. This included an ordinance to prevent the city from contracting with health insurers that discriminate in their coverage against transgender individuals. She also authored enacted ordinances to have the city protect wetlands, support adaption to climate change, enact a plastic bag ban, adopt Community Choice Aggregation, and provide paid parental leave to municipal employees. As a city councilor, Wu also partook in a successful effort to adopt regulations on short-term rentals.
Wu was first elected to the Boston City Council in 2013, and was subsequently thrice reelected. In 2021, Wu decided not to seek a fifth term on the City Council and to run for mayor instead.[2]
Wu was first elected to an at-large seat on the Boston City Council in November 2013. She finished in second place to incumbent Ayanna Pressley in an election where the top four finishers were elected to at-large seats.[3]
Adrian Walker of The Boston Globe observed early into Wu's campaign that her candidacy that her entry into the City Council election was generating excitement in a municipal election cycle that had yet to foster much other excitement despite a rare open-seat race for mayor.[4]
In August 2013, an article by Emily Cahn of Roll Call noted Wu had already made a strong impression on political observers in Boston, and that Wu was being speculated as a potential future candidate for the United States House of Representatives. The article quoted an unnamed Democratic political consultant as remarking, "She is one to watch. She’s running for the Boston City Council for the first time, but everybody is so impressed with her."[5]
Wu received the endorsement of The Boston Globes editorial board. In endorsing Wu's candidacy, the editorial board wrote, The Boston Globe editorial board further praised Wu's work on reforming restaurant permitting and licensing during her time in the mayoral administration of Thomas Menino. The editorial board observed that Wu's candidacy had received support from some prominent political players in part due to Wu's work as a staffer for Elizabeth Warren's successful 2012 Senate election campaign.[6]
In a 2021 article, Ellen Barry of The New York Times observed that Wu's temperament and personality as a candidate contrasted with that conventionally associated with Boston politicians, as did the fact that she was not a Boston native,
Barry further observed that Wu's candidacy came as the city "was turning a corner" with an "increasingly young, well-educated, and left-leaning" electorate. Shortly before the day of the general election, Wu experienced laryngitis. Supporters of her campaign worried that her inability to deliver speeches in the closing stretch of the election might impair her her performance in the election. However, she nevertheless prevailed in the election result. Barry observed,
Wu was re-elected in November 2015, again coming in second behind to Pressley.[7] Wu was again endorsed by the editorial board of The Boston Globe'.
Wu was re-elected to a third term on the council in November 2017, garnering the most votes among all at-large candidates;[8] her tally of over 65,000 votes was the most since Michael J. McCormack in November 1983. Wu was again endorsed by the editorial board of The Boston Globe.[9]
Wu re-elected to a fourth term in November 2019, again placing first.[10] In her 2019 campaign, Wu shared a campaign office with Kim Janey, who was seeking reelection as a district city councilor, and fellow at-large city council candidate Alejandra St. Guillen. Sharing campaign resources with a fellow at-large candidate was regarded as an unusual move that reflected confidence by Wu in her own odds of securing reelection.[11] [12] Wu was endorsed by Attorney General Maura Healey[13] and the editorial board of The Boston Globe.[14]
Wu was the first Asian American woman to serve on the council, and only the second Asian American member to serve on the council.[15] In late 2014, Wu became the first city councilor in Boston history to give birth while serving on the Boston City Council.[16] From January 2016 to January 2018, she served as president of the council, the first woman of color and first Asian American to hold the role.[17] [18] Wu's council presidency made her only the third female president in the then-106 year history of the Boston City Council.[19] In 2024, Wu recalled the atmosphere on council at the start of her tenure as being, "so gendered and racialized and pitted." When she joined the council, she and Ayanna Pressley were the only two women of color serving on the council. However, at the end of her tenure six of the council's thirteen members were women of color.
During her tenure on the Boston City Council, Wu chaired the Post Audit; Planning, Development and Transportation; and Oversight committees.[20] [21]
While Boston's strong mayor form of government had conventionally limited the impact that members of the Council had on the city government,[22] Wu’s tenure on the City Council occurred during a period in which the council began to increasingly wield its power, with the body yielding less to the mayor than previous iterations of the council had in the preceding decades and making use of its subpoena powers for the first time in decades.[23] Wu was regarded as a progressive on the Boston City Council,[24] and the council began pushing its politics in a similar direction during this time. In December 2019, Milton J. Valencia of The Boston Globe opined that, beginning under Wu's tenure as council president and continuing into Andrea Campbell's tenure as her successor, the Boston City Council, "has been, perhaps, the most aggressive in recent history in pushing reforms, often to the left of the mayor, on issues addressing climate change and economic and racial equity."[25]
In April 2019, Rachael Allen of The Atlantic wrote that Wu, "embodies the kind of political change that’s making waves in Washington, D.C., and cities across the country." Allen described Wu as presenting a unique leadership style when compared to other rising politicians that challenged the status quo, writing,