It may be the dead of summer, but it was a busy week in politics in Massachusetts. There was a new Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll on the Boston mayoral race, a new round of raises for Gov. Maura Healey’s cabinet secretaries, and the latest episode of excessive drinking involving a Beacon Hill figure.
We convened a discussion of it all with two sharp local political reporters, Kelly Garrity of Politico Massachusetts, and Gin Dumcius, editor of the Massterlist newsletter published by the State House News Service.
Poll: Wu leads Boston Mayor’s race
The new mayoral poll found incumbent Mayor Michelle Wu leading her main challenger Josh Kraft by a whopping 30 points, 60-to-30%.
“Even though folks might disagree with Wu on [issues like] the bike lanes, they’re still willing to, at this point, give her another term, another four years,” Dumcius said. “They overall feel the city is still headed in the right direction, or somewhat the right direction, whereas Kraft is making an argument that it’s not.”
“Something else that’s a little bit tough for Kraft is that his unfavorability was higher than his favorability. So it seems like a lot of the mayor’s messaging [is] trying to tie him to Trump, talking about Trump donors funding his PAC, funding his campaign. I think that that, it really seems to be sticking with people in Boston,” Garrity said.
Raises for Healey’s cabinet
We asked the reporters why Governor Healey thought this was a good time to hand out raises to her own cabinet members for the second time in six months.
“The overall optics of this are not great, particularly when you’re watching this bar advocate crisis unfold,” said Dumcius. You know, folks are being released by courts because…there’s a work stoppage with no public defenders there who want a raise so, when you put those side by side, it’s not a great look.”
You can watch the entire segment in the video above and please join us every Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m. on WBZ-TV for more discussion of current political topics on the weekend edition of “Keller At Large.”
