Josh CraftThe head of the charitable organization New England Patriots Foundation may not officially be a candidate for Boston mayor, but he has made moves and had discussions that suggest he is eyeing a formal 2025 campaign.
“I’ll announce it in the fall,” Kraft said while sitting and talking with friends at a Back Bay coffee shop on Monday, adding, “We have an opportunity to do a lot of good things.” Another customer overheard Kraft talking about possibly running for mayor and relayed the details to her friend. Commonwealth Beacon.
“Josh Craft is not currently a candidate for mayor and there is no plan or timeline for any announcement,” Craft spokeswoman Anisha Chakrabarti said in an emailed statement when asked about the conversations.
If Craft were to run, she would face Mayor Michelle Wu, who is expected to run for a second four-year term. Wu, the first woman and person of color to be elected mayor, has not yet officially declared her intention to run for re-election.
But just a few blocks from where Kraft was chatting over coffee, there’s some telltale signage for her reelection campaign — literally. On the side of the Corner Café Bakery building in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood is a new sign, an improvement over one from her first campaign four years ago. The new sign, paid for by her campaign committee, translates from Chinese to English and calls for support for her reelection.
Her fundraising efforts are also going well, with $1.5 million in her campaign account.
Kraft would have little trouble raising funds if elected and leveraging her family fortune, but she has been on the move both figuratively and literally. Late last year, after living in Newton and Brookline, she moved to Boston’s North End neighborhood, where a company with ties to the Kraft family bought a multimillion-dollar condominium. Kraft also became president of the League of Eastern Massachusetts Cities, a Roxbury-based nonprofit.
Kraft is also working with political consulting firm Keyser Public Strategies, the State House News Service reported Wednesday. One of the firm’s partners, Eileen O’Connor, is chair of the board of Mass Inc., the parent company of Mass Inc., which is a private equity firm. Commonwealth BeaconThe firm’s list of past and present bipartisan clients includes former Gov. Charlie Baker and Senate President Karen Spilka.
Kraft registered to vote in Boston in December and voted in the presidential primary in March, and has voted in both Democratic and Republican primaries, according to his publicly available voting history.
Kraft’s coffee shop sit-down came a week after a text-message poll conducted in Boston earlier this month focused primarily on Wu and Kraft and appeared to test the campaign’s potential messaging and favorability ratings for them, Gov. Maura Healey and other public figures, including Kraft’s father, Robert. Commonwealth Beacon We obtained a screenshot of a poll that asked voters to respond to positive and negative statements about the two men.
The poll said Craft, along with Wu, are “tackling Boston’s biggest challenges,” banning fossil fuels from the city’s new buildings and doubling city contracts with minority-owned businesses. The poll highlighted Craft’s time as CEO of the nonprofit Boys & Girls Clubs. Craft is “not a career politician” and will “bring people together to solve the big problems facing Boston,” the poll argued.
The poll cited statements made by Wu such as “she broke her campaign promise to implement rent control” and “her elite cronies are making Boston a more expensive place to live.” As for Craft, the poll asked respondents about statements that he is the son of a billionaire and “has given everything to me, including a job making charitable contributions from the family fortune.” It also asked whether Craft votes in Republican primaries and donates to Republican candidates, including conservatives who oppose abortion.
The poll also asked whether respondents would vote for Wu, Kraft, South Boston City Councilman Ed Flynn or Jorge Mendoza Iturralde, a North End restaurateur who is running for mayor.
Asked about the poll, Wu’s political adviser said it wasn’t a survey of the mayor. A spokesman for Kraft declined to comment. The results of the poll were not available.
Earlier this month, Wu was answering questions for a regular segment on GBH’s Boston Public Radio show when the topic of Kraft’s possible mayoral run and her growing profile in Boston came up. Co-host Jim Braud, who had recently attended several events in the city, said, “Every event we went to, Josh Kraft was there…Have you talked to him?”
“Boston is a world-class city with a lot going on, but it’s also a small city, so there were probably around 100 people who attended the three events with you,” Wu replied, adding that he had no personal relationship with Kraft.
The government is fully committed to AI
Massachusetts’ artificial intelligence tour is well underway, with the AI task force nearly ready to make its final recommendations on how to best deploy and promote the technology, and senior state and Boston officials exploring the possibilities at Northeastern University’s RIVER Research Institute.
A program of speakers and lab tours preceded Thursday’s meeting of the state AI task force, which was closed to media and stressed the need for “responsible” artificial intelligence. The technology, which includes everything from smart speech-to-text programs to models that predict medical diagnostics and sea-level rise to more efficiently manage first contact with customers and patients, has sparked both enthusiasm and nervous skepticism from the industries that deploy it.
Gov. Maura Healey is another enthusiastic supporter: She created an artificial intelligence task force earlier this year and is pushing for the creation of a $100 million applied AI hub through her economic development bill this fiscal year.
Speaking at Northeastern University, she said AI is “a new, and not-so-new, innovation that is certainly changing the world.” AI will “transform every aspect of our lives. It will transform every sector of the economy, unlock new solutions, create new careers and business opportunities. But there’s a lot of work to be done,” she said.
Long before he became a prosecutor taking on big tech companies like Uber and Facebook, Healey worked as a private lawyer representing technology and life sciences companies.
Despite ongoing debate among task force members about what “ethical AI” looks like and the “final stages” of that work approaching, the administration is moving full steam ahead: State agencies plan to adopt AI tools developed by Northeastern Lab “right now” to improve their capabilities and provide better state services, Healy said.
