POLITICO’s Recast Power List: AAPI Mayors Michelle Wu, Aftab Pureval & Bruce Harrell
Michelle Wu, Bruce Harrell and Aftab Pureval shattered glass ceilings that had stood for centuries in their respective cities. But the first Asian American mayors of Boston, Seattle and Cincinnati didn’t get much time to celebrate their historic elections last fall. Their grand inaugural fetes — and their plans for their first days and weeks in office — got swept away by the Omicron wave.
Pureval declared a state of emergency in Cincinnati as his fledgling administration scrambled to secure enough Covid-19 tests. As Omicron ebbed, Harrell, who is also Seattle’s second Black mayor, began talking about bringing city workers back to their desks along with his plans to reform and rebuild the city’s police force. Wu is boosting vaccination rates while searching for Boston’s next top cop and school superintendent.
Harrell, Pureval and Wu in particular also ushered in new political eras for their cities. An unabashed progressive, Wu vowed to make municipal government look more like the diversifying city it serves, and to deliver bold and equitable policy changes alongside basic city services. Voters handed her a clear mandate to do it, propelling her to a nearly 30-point victory last November.
Wu has succeeded in some of those aims already — making three bus routes that run through the heart of Boston’s Black and brown neighborhoods free for two years and creating an Office of Black Male Advancement. But the first woman and person of color elected mayor of Boston has faced pushback — some of it racist and misogynistic — over her mask and vaccine mandates from a small but vocal group of protesters who have taken their displeasure to social media and to her front door.
“Not everyone is excited about these barriers coming down,” Wu said in a recent interview. But “there are many more people who have been involved and already helped fundamentally change how we will see city government and politics from this point forward.”
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