brendan halpin

In case you’ve missed it, Brookline resident/nepo baby Josh Kraft has filed paperwork to run for mayor of Boston.

Given that Kraft didn’t even own property in Boston until 2023 and seemed confused as to where he lived in campaign finance filings through the end of 2024, sometimes listing his Brookline address, sometimes listing his Boston address, it’s worth asking why he wants to be mayor of Boston.

Because there’s no obvious issue here. We don’t know much about Kraft’s politics except that he will happily donate to hatemongering, pro-insurrection, forced birth advocating members of Congress as long as they support Israel. OK, so he sees the rights of Bostonians who are queer or have uteruses as optional, and certainly subordinate to support of Israel.

Absolutely contemptible politics, but I don’t see how this would compel him to run for mayor of Boston. If supporting Bibi’s government is his top priority, surely he’d be able to have more influence on that from the US House or Senate. (I mean, theoretically. Both bodies are pretty irrelevant now that we live in an autocracy/oligarchy, but let’s focus on Boston for now.)

So absent any obvious policy differences on a local level, why does Josh Kraft want to be mayor?

You are not going to believe this. But I really think it’s about soccer.

Well, actually, it’s about having the temerity to say no to Josh Kraft’s father.

First let’s look at Josh himself, who used his status as a pipeline for daddy’s money to build a nice career for himself as a nonprofit executive before returning to work for his father at age 53. Josh is billed as the head of Kraft Family Philanthropies, though this organization doesn’t actually exist. (No, really. I looked it up.)

I assume this means he’s the head of philanthropy in one of his father’s for-profit companies and manages giving to the non-profit organizations controlled by his dad (poor Josh is just listed as “clerk” on most of these organizations’ tax filings.). I guess they act like he works for a separate organization in order to disguise the fact that he reports to his brother and his dad. The other advantage to doing this is keeping his salary private. If you’re one of the top salaried employees at a nonprofit, you have to disclose your salary; if, on the other hand, you work at a family-owned private company, your salary is nobody’s business but your own. So, okay, Josh gets to pull down what I assume is a substantial six-figure salary to give his dad’s money away and nobody but his dad and his accountant know exactly what that salary is.

My point here is only partly to mock the fact that Josh Kraft is, in a meaningful sense, a 57-year-old child rather than an adult, completely lacking an identity distinct from his father. It’s also to support my point that Josh Kraft is his father’s surrogate and is running for mayor because his dad doesn’t like Michelle Wu.

Why might this be? Well, in addition to owning the New England Patriots and being a tug job enthusiast, Daddy Bob is also the owner of New England Revolution, a historically terrible MLS team that in its 31 years of existence has won the MLS cup zero times and made the finals one time in 2007. The Revolution plays at Gillette Stadium where the Patriots play, but Bob Kraft has been advocating for a separate soccer stadium for years. (What’s wrong with having the Revolution play at Gillette, except that it always looks kind of sad when a team that draws 20k fans plays in a stadium that seats 64k?)

Back in 2014-15 when Marty Walsh was trying to ram through a Boston Olympic bid, there was talk of taking some public land in the shadow of Interstate 93 (Widett Circle) and making a stadium there. When the Olympic bid collapsed, Bob Kraft wanted that land for his soccer stadium.

Guess who torpedoed the Walsh-brokered giveaway of public land to Kraft? Then city councilor Michelle Wu!

So Kraft takes his ball and goes home, and later comes up with a plan to put a soccer stadium in Everett, right on the border with Boston. Except that having a stadium right next to Boston is going to have traffic and other logistical impacts on Boston. So naturally Bob Kraft takes a meeting with Michelle Wu to talk it over.

Kidding! Because Kraft is an octogenarian man baby, he refuses to take calls from the Mayor of Boston about the project. Then she reportedly gets her friends in the legislature to help kill the Commonwealth’s contribution to the project, and the Everett stadium is dead, at least temporarily.

Shortly thereafter, Josh Kraft “decides” he’s running for mayor. Who knows. Maybe he really wants to be mayor for reasons that have nothing to do with the father who controls his entire professional identity. Or maybe Dad and big brother Jonathan told him he had to in order to avenge Michelle Wu’s refusal to do Kraft’s bidding.

What a sad, petty little story this is. What sad, petty little people the Krafts are. Here’s hoping Boston voters don’t choose to make our city another subsidiary of the Kraft organization.