Last time I talked about the money flowing into our mayoral election in Boston, and this time we’re back for the city council at-large election. With early voting for the preliminary election coming up next week (September 9th, with early voting Aug 30th-31st, Sept. 2nd-5th), the time is ripe for a dive into the city council candidates’ campaign finances.

From the official Boston City Council page - “The City Council is the legislative body of the City of Boston. Councilors are elected every two years by the citizens of Boston. The council is made up of four at-large councilors that represent the entire City, and nine district councilors that represent specific areas of the City.

The City Council serves as a link between the citizens of Boston and their municipal government. Councilors help constituents by connecting them to resources, services, and City departments. They serve as advocates for all Bostonians.

Through their work, City councilors make sure Boston continues to be a great place to live, work, and play. Learn more about the work of the City Council.”

Whereas the mayor sets the agenda for the city and creates the budget, city councilors debate the budget, amend it, and generally serve as a check on the mayor’s power. They also hold hearings and create their own city ordinances controlling what little power they’re designated that isn’t reserved for the mayor, the state, or the federal government. Which is not much.

The preliminary election on Sept. 9 will filter the ten candidates on the ballot down to a total of eight. Then at the general election on Nov. 4 (early voting Oct. 25th-31st), eight will be whittled down to four.

The cool thing about the city council election is that it operates somewhat like an approval voting system, where you’ll be able to vote for four candidates rather than one. Then, the candidates with the most votes win - eight in the preliminary, and the final four in the general.

What you can see from the vote counts from previous elections is that there tends to be a large chunk of voters - often much more than half - who do not even cast a single vote for city council at-large. In mayoral election years, this is partially due to voters who only come out to vote for mayor, but even in non-mayoral elections a ton of ballots are left completely blank. Don’t be one of these blank ballots! You don’t have to select four candidates either, only up to four. So if nothing else, at least pick one candidate from the below to support. Your voice matters! It’s very probable that all the people who only vote for mayor would be able to sway the election.

In examining the money that goes into an election with as diverse a cast of characters as the city council at-large election, it helps to get an overview of the landscape. Since we already went over the mayoral candidates last time, I thought “what better way to get acquainted than to try and figure out how much these candidates can be sorted into camps in the mayoral election?” So, I cross-correlated every candidate’s donors to find out how many of them have donated to each mayoral candidate. Through the analysis, there was too little data on correlation with DaRosa donors to compare amongst candidates, so I’ve narrowed it to Kraft and Wu.

Now it’s important to realize when it comes to data that the data can only ever *suggest* anything other than what it literally is. The data below will literally tell you “What percent of this candidate’s money came from people who also donated exclusively to Wu/Kraft?” and then “What percent of this candidate’s money came from people who donated to none of the mayoral candidates?” Just because a candidate receives a high percentage of their cash from people who also spend on Michelle Wu doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to support everything she brings to the council.

But candidates are not bystanders to the donations they receive. The association between the mayoral and the city council candidate’s funding could also indicate that the two candidates are purposefully targeting the same demographics. Whether that’s intentional or not depends on the situation. In the end, how much you take this data into account is up to you, but it’s here for you regardless.

Mean, median, and mode - for reference - are all different ways of measuring the average donation. Mean is the total of all donations divided by the count of donations. Median is the value that separates the higher half from the lower half of donations. Mode is the most common donation amount.

Above - how rich are each candidate’s pool of donors. No big outliers here, it’s a pretty smooth curve, although those whose mean rides above $200 can be somewhat separated out from those below. Spoilers for the rest of this post, but this chart is pretty much just candidates who skew towards Kraft at the top, Wu candidates in the middle, and independents at the bottom. This is a reaffirmation of what we already know from the last post - that the Kraft campaign is tied heavily with the interests of moneyed people - but also a reminder that Michelle Wu is not a mayor whose influence relies heavily on grassroots support.

For the statistics nerds I should also mention that the sample size here is above 100 for each of the candidates, with the exception of Yves Mary Jean, who only had a dozen. This explains why he appears all over the place on these charts. The less data points there are, the harder it is to say what can be pulled from the data.

Above is the other important axis that’s going to matter to people - how much money candidates are getting from outside the city. You’ll notice that Mathelier is a huge outlier here, we’ll dig into that down below. For now, I will let the data speak for itself.

Without further ado, onto the candidates:

Here I’ve highlighted the candidates I’ve included in the Wu camp based on their money. Henry Santana and Ruthzee Louijeune are two current city councilors at-large, with the latter being the city council president. It’s widely recognized that Wu has a lot of influence on the city council, and those two are just the tip of the iceberg.

The other two current city councilors at-large - Erin Murphy and Julia Mejia - are right behind them. You do have to wonder how many donors just donate to incumbents. If you’re trying to curry influence in local government it’s not hard to see that you’ll prefer to contribute to proven winners. I tried to find how many donors were donating to all four city councilors at large but I found it was only a handful - a trickle compared to the deluge of donations this election cycle.

My theory is that the four sitting councilors are represented at the top here mostly because a wealthy individual looking to get something done on city council can take their pick of the sitting ones - whichever they think will be most sympathetic to their agenda - and then try to curry favor with the mayor. Mejia and Murphy have made it clear that they’re not going to step to the mayor’s tune, so if they weren’t incumbent they would probably be lower down on this graph.

After the incumbents, it’s the five other challengers, who we’ll take in turn later on. Notable outliers on the low end here are Mathelier and Jean - Mathelier due to his rather unorthodox funding strategy and Jean because I doubt anyone who’s shelling out for the mayoral race knows who he is.

What can I say about Henry Santana?

…………………………………………

Seriously, what can I even say? He’s clearly just on the city council because Wu wants him there, and not just because 70% of his funding comes from her donors. He used to work for the mayor and he even purportedly had to have a call put out to get him extra ballot signatures… through Michelle Wu’s campaign email list.

He was first elected in 2023, thousands of votes ahead of the nearest Bridget Nee-Walsh but also thousands of votes behind Mejia, Murphy, and Louijeune. Seeing as he wasn’t even able to collect enough signatures himself and has done little to make a name for himself on city council recently (in fact seemingly reveling in obscurity), his path to reelection may be difficult. Still, the mayor’s support must count for something.

You may notice that the percentages on this map don’t quite add up to 100%. That’s because Santana also received four donations from campaign committees (Gabriela Coletta, Lydia Edwards, John Fitzgerald, and Enrique Pepen) operating out of the 02137 zip code. Why these four campaigns are all operating out of the same P.O. Box in Readville beats me, but their percentage of Santana’s Boston donations are not representable on a map.

His support more or less lines up with Michelle Wu’s bike ride to Beacon Hill, so we can assume her in-person campaigning has been highly successful. But really, it seems that he’s likely just hard at work winning the well-to-do progressive vote. He’s also receiving a significant chunk from East Boston compared to your average city council candidate. I had a look to see if this was Hispanic working-class support but it seems to be a blend of white-collar downtown and city workers instead.

His map doesn’t look too much like anyone else’s but he’s going to have to watch out he doesn’t get squashed in Roxbury and JP by Louijeune, Mejia, Mathelier, and Valdez, who all hope to pull a pretty good chunk from the area. Five candidates, only four votes. And that’s without throwing in all the white people voting for Murphy and Baker too. Having an election like this without some sort of ranked choice system is really a bit absurd.

Ruthzee Louijeune is the current City Council President, which means she sets the agenda for the entire city council. She was unanimously elected to the position by the entire body. I’ve honestly never heard a serious knock against Louijeune. She’s like the calm in the storm of city council controversy that’s almost as bad as a theatre club. By all accounts, she’s well-versed, highly educated and dedicated to the betterment of the city. And of course, her positions are - carefully or otherwise - positioned to appeal to the broadest base of Boston voters.

A sensible theory for why Louijeune is where she is on the Wu axis is that she simply appeals to the same broad range of voters as Wu. She has play in the Black and Hispanic sections of Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Dorchester but also plenty of support in the mayor’s cores of West Roxbury, Roslindale and Jamaica Plain. She doesn’t slack in Back Bay and the South End either.

But even if coincidental, her interests and the mayor’s align a lot. Which basically means if you like the mayor’s policies, great, and if you don’t, great, don’t vote for her. But if your concern is having too many of Wu’s devoted acolytes on city council, Louijeune may be the wrong target.

None of these candidates have a higher percentage of Kraft donors than Wu donors, but I attribute this to the incumbent effect and the fact that Wu’s contributions go back four years while Kraft’s only go back one. What they have in common is that their percentages tower above the other candidates (and some above each other’s).

The distinction between these candidates and the others is also that they have received donations directly from the Kraft family themselves, some more than others. Kraft even seems to have funneled a donation through his daughter.

Their motivations may vary but the effect is the same. Kraft has his slate of candidates. Perhaps part of the intention of his own seemingly doomed campaign is to try and get three or four candidates beholden to his family and his family friends’ interests on the city council, after that plan failed without him in 2023. The question is then - will this support be a boon or a death knell? Only time can tell.

Onuoha is the current Assistant General Counsel & Director of Health & Safety for the Boston Water & Sewer Commission. About 18% of his funding comes from Josh Kraft donors and 24% from Wu donors. His donors are the wealthiest of any candidate in the race by far, but even they seem to be split on the question of Kraft vs. Wu. As for his beliefs, it’s pretty much the same positions as Kraft. He only got $1,500 in donations from Kraft himself, so slacking compared with the rest of the field.

I don’t know what his path to getting elected is. His constituents, based on this graph, seem to be some of the wealthiest people from all around the city. But unfortunately for him, most people in the city aren’t actually that wealthy. There’s something to be said for increased wealth of donors having a chilling effect on a campaign. He’s got not a single donation from the Black and Hispanic cores of Roxbury, Grove Hall, and Mattapan. Needless to say, it’s going to be a serious uphill battle for him to get on the council.

Frank Baker was the District 3 city councilor for twelve years before he announced his retirement in 2023. He was a fairly independent voice during his tenure on the council but his money aligns with Kraft second most out of anyone. As we’ll see below though, he also has among the highest percent from unaligned donors. My read is that he is simply anti-Wu in the same way that Kraft donors are, although he has obviously benefited from the big man’s pocketbook. It was $5,000 in one week from the Kraft brothers and dad.

His strength in Dorchester (his old District 3 stomping ground) is probably actually greater than Murphy’s. If he can get most of the same people that listed her last election to list him he actually stands a decent chance of getting on the city council.

Erin Murphy was elected for the first time in 2021, replacing Michelle Wu as city councilor at-large. She has been one of the more conservative members of the council, and lives on Kraft’s side of most issues. She and Ed Flynn probably spend more time with each other than anyone else. She was also against the Boston redistricted map which ultimately got kicked back. Like Flynn has been for years, she often makes noise about highly procedural nonsense, but that’s nothing particularly original on Boston city council.

I’m the kind of person who sees conservatism as a fear-induced impediment to necessary improvements, so I’m not much inclined to favor her politics. But to be honest if you like Josh Kraft you should probably vote for her. She’s received $2,000 from the Krafts themselves.

Alternate title - map of white conservatives in Boston. Her map overlaps with Baker’s a lot and like I said above, they may end up stealing from each other a bit, or they may boost each other. If anyone more familiar with previous local elections wants to comment their perspective on this, feel free!

Despite only being in office since 2020, Mejia is one of the longest-serving city councilors. She’s built a fiery progressive brand, often referring to herself as the “chihuahua” on city council. She’s also a regular dissenting voice, advocating for the people (which is backed up by her low average donation) and often clashing with the mayor and other city councilors. Besides advocating for an elected school committee, she has also broken on the White stadium renovation and on bus lane projects, often responding to community backlash on these issues.

I went back and forth on whether Mejia should be included in the Kraft group. She is vastly more progressive on many issues than he is, and her connection to the community is much stronger. However, on all the issues I highlighted above, they align.

And in terms of the money, she oddly fits into the Kraft group in a variety of ways. She is not an outlier on the Kraft graph, although receiving the least amount of donations from Kraft supporters. She also slots right into the Kraft group in terms of the amount of Wu donations and in terms of how much unaligned funding she receives. And take into account that she has also received $3,500 in donations directly from the Kraft family, accounting for 2% of her total donations since last election cycle.

Make of it what you will, but I can’t reasonably extract her data from the other three. The only way in which she is different from the others is that her mean donation is well below theirs. Is this an attempt by Kraft to court city councilors representing underprivileged citizens of the city? Is it in good faith or a pragmatic political play? Has Kraft made similar overtures to other city councilors? (Yes.) As always, I leave it to you.

Mejia’s percent of support in regions of the city is almost exactly the same as Valdez. The difference in shading on the two graphs makes it look like Valdez’s support is more concentrated, but their numbers are really pretty similar. But since voters can pick four options on election day, it’s a little unclear to me whether Valdez will be pulled along with Mejia voters or whether their voters will be split and leave an opening for someone like Mathelier or Santana to expand their pool.

And at last we come to the candidates who have not received a significant chunk of change from either Kraft or Wu donors, who I have labeled “unaligned”.

The only two who dip below 50% are Louijeune and Santana. These are probably the two most linked to the current administration out of all. Onuoha, Mejia and Murphy see a slump because of the funding they receive from both Kraft and Wu donors. For Baker the difference is almost all Kraft donors and for Valdez exclusively Wu donors as discussed earlier. Mathelier has very few of either kind and Jean has literally none.

I met Jean outside a Whole Foods in West Roxbury. You have to hand it to the guy, he was able to collect all of his own signatures. Unfortunately for him, he hasn’t made it out to any of the city council forums, which has left a lot of people wondering who he is. What I can tell you is that he is not using Squarespace to build his campaign website, which I think should be a point of pride for any candidate. I know he went to Bridgewater State and then Suffolk University. He refers to himself as a poet in his political donations. I don’t know, man.

This is his eight Boston donations.

Marvin Mathelier is running as an outsider progressive hoping to take on the entropy of the Boston political system. I have to sympathize with this perspective, but also recognize that the effectiveness is going to rely on the combined power of his energy and insight. Will he be able to bring the right message at the right time to challenge his fellow city councilors and the mayor? Or will he be strangled by the system?

Marvin is a Marine, and 61% of his funding comes from outside the state, vastly more than any other candidate. That number may have changed since I pulled the data - he’s gotten more donations from MA recently but he likely still has the highest percentage of out-of-state funding. This may reflect his status as a transplant to Boston, having been born and raised in Brooklyn, and his military connections spanning the country. But it’s definitely not a great sign in terms of his ability to mobilize community support in his campaign.

I was surprised to see so much of his Boston support coming from South Boston, a notoriously anti-progressive area. Maybe the military veteran tag has gotten him some support there he wouldn’t have otherwise.

His focus in Jamaica Plain and Roxbury also outstrips any other candidate, to the point that he may stand a decent chance of carrying one or both of those districts. But his strength wanes in other parts of the city, with not even a single donation from outskirts like Brighton and East Boston, and few from Back Bay and Downtown. He’s going to have to build his profile if he wants to stand a chance of unseating an incumbent.

I happened to be walking by his store Ula Cafe in JP during Porchfest, where they had a poetry reading event going on. I stopped and listened for a while. The space had the vibe of a community center. Who knows how much Mathelier himself had to do with that, but people who can foster community are to me the ideal city council candidates.

The headline I’ve pulled out is that Alex Valdez is unaffiliated. But if she is, she’s certainly the most affiliated “unaffiliated”. Mayor Wu appointed her Director of the newly restructured Office of Cultural Affairs last year. She also personally donated earlier this year to the Henry Santana campaign. Her campaign has also sent some money to the Democratic State Committee. So she certainly has some connections that aren’t let on in my analysis. She also is one of only two candidates not to receive a single cent from Kraft supporters, although 19% of her support comes from Wu donors.

All that aside, she has shown herself to be pretty progressive and would likely be in lockstep with the mayor on most issues regardless, including the controversial bus lane “issue”. She has earned the endorsements of several Democratic ward committees, with more coming in every week.

When I originally published this, I forgot this one.

You may be surprised to not have seen any registered Republicans on this list so far, but here is the only one, Rachel Miselman. She is a local public access television producer and political interviewer, according to her Linkedin. She has raised $260 from three donations, including State Senator Peter Durant (R, of course). She has no campaign website, and has not made it out to any political forums. But why would she try? She knows that Republicans are not a real opposition party in this state, with Democrats controlling the State House and State Senate with supermajorities, unanimously controlling Boston City Council, and both the Mayor of Boston and the Governor, as well as countless other town councils, city councils, mayoralties, DAs, Governor’s councilors, etc. etc.

But it does beg the question: Why is there no serious opposition to Democrats in Massachusetts?

So at last we come to the end. Hopefully, if you’re totally unfamiliar with the race, you were able to get a sense of the landscape. And if you were already familiar, hopefully this analysis has given you something new to chew on when deciding who to support later this year.

Preliminary Election - Sept. 9

General Election - Nov. 4

Be there or be square!