Josh Kraft, a son of the billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and longtime philanthropist, is dipping into his personal bank account and putting $2 million of his own cash toward funding his mayoral campaign.
Kraft has $151,661 cash on hand, per the Office of Campaign and Political Finance, meaning that the $2 million windfall will level the financial playing field with Mayor Michelle Wu, whose campaign war chest stands at $2.2 million.
"The power of incumbency is a real thing," Kraft said in a Friday statement. "While Mayor Wu appears to be running her campaign out of City Hall, I have a fully staffed campaign team, including a campaign headquarters in Nubian Square.
"While my campaign just reached the $1 million mark in donations, a modern campaign that includes a strong and robust field organization requires more resources than I can raise in such a short time frame," he said, adding, "I have never felt more optimistic about my campaign and what lies ahead."
The Wu campaign responded by saying the move, first reported by Politico, reeked of Kraft's wealthy family trying to buy him the mayor's job. The mayor's campaign coffers have largely come through fundraising, but have accumulated over the course of her first term.
"We've already seen millions of dollars from Trump supporters pouring into desperate ads attacking Boston's progress, and now Josh Kraft is self-funding with millions more from his family wealth too," Wu campaign spokesperson Julia Leja said in a Friday statement.
"Most Bostonians don't have a billionaire father to buy them a condo so they can move in to run for an office they've never voted for, live in a ward they don't know, and spend millions from their family wealth and connections to buy the election. The Krafts are trying to buy Josh a job, but Bostonians know our city is not for sale."