The NY Post’s cover this morning. What more can you say? … Btw: Here’s preliminary evidence that Mamdani is nothing more than the second coming of Bill De Blasio, something I’ve mentioned previously.

Clearly, it wasn’t a big anti-incumbent night across Massachusetts, not with Mayor Michelle Wu cruising unopposed to victory and Boston voters re-electing four at-large city councilors yesterday etc. But there was something stirring out there, with incumbent mayors losing in Everett and Gloucester and mayoral allies in Quincy getting pummeled. Even school committee members in Cambridge were getting the boot. … It doesn’t seem tied to any ideological or partisan shift per se. Just an old-fashioned fed-up, throw-the-rascals-out sentiment, tied to arrogant spending and pay raises and incompetent leadership. Hopefully, it will keep our one-party incumbents on their toes heading into 2026. … Fyi: WCVB has an excellent roundup of election results from around the state.

Update – From Michael Jonas at CommonWealth  Beacon: “Competitive mayoral races abound, just not in Boston.” … I like the old Barney Frank quip at the end of Michael’s piece. It’s so true about small-city politics

Update II – 11.6.25 – From Contrarian Boston: “Massachusetts mayors caught behaving badly with sneaky pay grabs and other controversies sent packing by fed-up constituents”

Update III – 11.6.25 – And in related post-election day news, from the Globe: “Quincy mayor, already facing controversy, took thousands of dollars in illegal campaign donations, state says”

I was all set to come out guns blazing at Fox News for overemphasizing Zohran Mamdani’s victory last night, as part of the network’s never-ending quest to whip the faithful into a lather over its latest Red Scare. So what did I see this morning? A shocking modicum of balance at Fox (see screen capture below) and an absurd overemphasis of Mamdani’s victory at the NYT (see below). Doh! … OK, it’s the Times’s home turf, so they’re playing up the big NYC mayoral election. But to me the big election story from last night was Democrats’ “extraordinary sweep of battleground districts,” as one sane Times reporter puts it, and that was largely accomplished via moderate Dems, not democratic socialists, winning tough gubernatorial elections in NJ and Virginia.

From PBS on the victories by Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey: “Both actively distanced themselves from some of the Democratic Party’s far-left policies and emphasized what Spanberger described in her victory speech as ‘pragmatism over partisanship.’”

The unmistakable loser last night: Donald Trump. It was a solid, early-term, across-the-board rebuke of the president. … Now on to 2026! ….

Update – Some welcome common sense from the Globe’s David Scharfenberg, who writes that the Democratic Party can only win moving forward if Dems remain united, with some key adjustments:  “It has to accommodate both the centrists of Virginia and the leftists of Manhattan. It has to be elastic. The trick is not stretching too far in one direction. And in recent years, the party has done just that, reaching way out to the left and damaging the Democratic brand in the process.”

I’m no fan of Zohran Mamdani. As I’ve previously mentioned, he’s a fresh face pushing very old ideas – and yet somehow his pitch that he represents something new is working. He’ll probably get elected next week as mayor of New York. And if he does and ends up implementing most of what he’s advocated in the past, he will fail. Period. No question about it. New York will go through one of its patented convulsions and someone new will have to later step in to pick up the pieces. We saw this scenario unfold after the disastrous ‘70s, 9/11 and Covid., etc. Bottom line: New York will survive Mamdani. … And that’s a worst-case scenario. … Who knows? Once in office, Mamdani might be more pragmatic than thought (sort of like Michelle Wu, who’s committed to strong city services, despite her ideological priggishness ) or maybe even pull a Francois Mitterand, i.e. making dramatic policy u-turns after realizing his Bowdoin classroom theories don’t work in the real world. … Either way (worst-case scenario or Mitterand redux), Mamdani’s democratic socialist ideas will get discredited – yet again. So hold the hysteria, please. 

Btw: While NY will survive Mamdani, this is my real fear: “The Democrats’ Civil War is between Kamala’s Emptiness and Mamdani’s Revolution.” … I hope she’s wrong. Such a choice will only strengthen a MAGA movement that needs to be stopped if America is ever going to heal.

Btw II: This is what NY and most other American cities need: A Mike Duggan-like mayor. Definitely read the Post editorial. The centrist Duggan, after impressively turning around Detroit, is now running for governor of Michigan.

— This is disappointing, but give it time: “Months After Legalization, Building ADUs Remains Costly” (B&T)

— At least they’re policing themselves: “Harvard Salient’s Board of Directors Suspends Publication, Citing ‘Reprehensible’ Material in Articles” (Harvard Crimson, via SV)

— He’s right. Dems did pick this battle under pressure from their base: “The Lone House Democrat Who Thinks His Party Has the Shutdown All Wrong” (WSJ)

— And how did he arrive at such a precise number of permissible kiosks? What a silly bill: “Bill would limit number of self-checkout kiosks at Mass. grocery stores” (Globe)

— Depressing: “Want to buy a garage in Cambridge? It’ll cost you more than anywhere else in the U.S.” (BBJ)

— Is this supposed to impress people? “Kamala Harris endorses Koh for Moulton’s Congressional seat” (Globe)

— Just fyi: “Supermarket over the turnpike shut because of asbestos” (Universal Hub)

— A great piece on one of the most controversial figures in film history: “What Leni Riefenstahl’s Work Reveals About Fascism” (The Atlantic)

— It’s called ‘ageism’: “Too Much Experience Hurts You in Today’s Tough Job Market” (WSJ)

— The Chick-fil-A juggernaut rolls on: “How KFC Lost Fast Food’s Chicken Crown—and How It Plans to Win It Back” (WSJ)

 

To those who don’t know him, he might come across sometimes as a classic TV showman – even a little clownish due to his on-air enthusiasm. But to those who know Jon Keller, he’s an incredibly perceptive and fair newsman who isn’t afraid to say what’s on his mind. He’s a political institution in Boston. He’s obviously been a political reporter on TV for years now, but this guy can definitely write. I know. I used to “edit” his weekly MassterList columns when I was churning out that newsletter – and his punchy copy always came in clean as a whistle and on target. *

Jon was laid off yesterday from WBZ-TV, his long-time employer, as the Herald and Globe report. But he won’t be unemployed very long. Other TV and radio stations would be crazy not to hire him (hint, hint WBUR, GBH, ‘CVB etc.) And he’d make a great blogger, newsletter writer, podcaster, whatever. He’s not going away.

 * Jon’s also author of one of my favorite local political books, “The Bluest State: How Democrats Created the Massachusetts Blueprint for American Political Disaster.” Seventeen years after its publication, it’s still relevant considering the disastrous state of today’s Democratic Party.

Update — From a Hub Blog reader on Keller’s layoff: “Another step towards content-free local news.  More time for WBZ Sunday morning show to cover pet adoptions and new places to get dessert.  Or as the late Jack Cole called it, ‘alleged news.’ “

Perhaps the strongest evidence yet that a gubernatorial run isn’t in Michelle Wu’s future? Her latest call, as reported by the Globe, to repeal Proposition 2½ so local towns and cities can raise taxes without limits. Though it passed 35 years ago, Prop 2½ remains popular and calling for its repeal is considered political dynamite for anyone eyeing a statewide race. Wu must know this. … And that leads me to Gintautas Dumcius’s observation at MassterList last week that Wu, amid all the wild speculation about her future following her big election victory over Josh Kraft last month, might well be content with just being “mayor for life,” a point Hub Blog previously alluded to before hemming and hawing about her future. … Back to Wu’s repeal-Prop 2½ message: She’s talking like a mayor in search of ever more bucks, not a gubernatorial aspirant in search of statewide votes. She’s also talking like a true-believer ideologue, but we won’t get into that now.

— Active in 17 states, the left-wing Working Families Party is beefing up its presence here: “A new political party has come to Mass. Here’s their plan to make a mark” (MassLive)

— What’s their Plan B?: “Boston.com, the Globe’s free site since its launch 30 years ago, is adding a metered paywall.” (Media Nation)

— Weaponizing NIMBY-ism to resist Trump. Brilliant! “To Fight ICE, Portland’s Leaders Turn to What They Know Best: Zoning” (NYT)

— Peggy Noonan isn’t so sure anymore: “A Republic, but Can We Keep It?” (WSJ)

— This is absolutely ridiculous: “The Average Cost of a Family Health Insurance Plan Is Now $27,000” (WSJ)

— Meanwhile, they’re screwing up one of the few areas of health-care that’s actually been working: “The Medicare Advantage ecosystem is changing, and patients are caught in the middle” (Globe)

— Are they at all familiar with Aesop’s The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg? “Cambridge is raising its commercial property tax rate by 22 percent. (That’s not a typo.)” (Globe)

— The word ‘brazen’ comes to mind: “Immigrant who was grabbed by the regime, ordered released, then grabbed again is ordered released again” (Universal Hub)

— It’s basically using AI to expand AI’s potential within the sciences: “Why the whole world is watching one fast-growing Cambridge lab AI firm” (BBJ)

— I’m not sure about the effective part: “Resistance Is Cringe—But It’s Also Effective” (Atlantic)

Re this Globe bonbon to Michelle Wu: Let’s not get too carried away with her big preliminary-election triumph over Josh Kraft. Her 72 percent of the vote was indeed impressive, as mentioned by yours truly a few weeks ago. But putting it into perspective, the results follow a recent pattern of big mayoral re-election victories in Boston. 

There’s Ray Flynn’s 67 and 74 percent re-election vote outcomes in ’87 and ’91, respectively. Of course there’s Tom Menino, who racked up re-election vote returns of 71, 76, 67 and 57 percent in 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2009, respectively. And most recently Marty Walsh posted none-too-shabby re-election victories of 62 percent (in the preliminary election) and 65 percent (in the general election) in 2021.

All four mayors – Flynn, Menino, Walsh and Wu – were/are highly popular and re-elected because they delivered. Just pointing it out.