MICHELLE WU, the 36-year-old daughter of immigrants from China’s Taiwan, made history Tuesday night, easily defeating fellow city councilor Annissa Essaibi George to become the first woman and the first Asian American elected mayor of Boston. For nearly 200 years, Boston has elected only white men to the top office.

Amidst hundreds of supporters and campaign staff at the Boston Center for the Arts on Tremont Street, Wu acknowledged the powerful symbolism of her win, while promising real change across the city.

“One of my sons asked me the other night if boys can be elected mayor of Boston,” Wu told the cheering crowd. “They have been and they will again someday, but not tonight.”

“On this day, Boston elected your mom, because from every quarter of this city, Boston has spoken,” Wu said. “We are ready to be a Boston for everyone.”

She went on to say: “what we deserve is a Boston where all of us are seen, heard, treasured and valued.”

Wu told the room her plans to create equitable schools, provide mental health care to those struggling with addiction across the city, to support small businesses especially those owned by Black Bostonians and to make Boston a Green New Deal city.

George conceded the race just after 10:20 p.m. Tuesday, congratulating Wu on her victory and noting the history she’s made.

“I know this is no small feat. You know it’s no small feat,” George said. “I want her to show the city how mothers get it done.”

It marks the fifth-straight election where Wu garnered more votes than George citywide, including four at-large city council races where they faced off since 2013. Wu also ran well ahead of George in September’s preliminary election in a larger field of candidates.

Wu will replace Kim Janey, the first woman and Black person to serve as mayor, who took over the job earlier this year after Marty Walsh resigned to become labor secretary in U.S. President Joe Biden’s Cabinet in January.

In the weeks leading up to the election, polls consistently showed Wu with a clear lead over George, also a woman of color.

From the beginning, this election was a remarkable departure from Boston’s history. Uncontested mayoral races, where there is no incumbent seeking re-election, are hard to come by in Boston and often draw crowded primaries in the Democrat-heavy city. And in this year’s unaffiliated primary, every serious contender was a person of color, and most of them were women.

While Boston has long served as an incubator of liberal politicians on the national level, its local politics has traditionally been more insular and transactional, a political paradise for back-slapping men at the heads of political machines. Wu, a policy wonk who was a Harvard Law student and political protege of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), is pushing to turn the city into a bastion of progressive policy.

While progressives have made key gains in the U.S. House, in state legislatures and in district attorneys’ offices around the country in recent years, they have won few races for executive positions. Wu’s tenure could serve as a policy blueprint and a political test for other left-wing candidates.

Wu has argued for waiving fees for much of the city’s public transportation system; reimposing rent control; and a city-sized version of the Green New Deal aiming for net zero municipal emissions by 2024, which includes more trees and electric school buses to improve the environment.

And while George argued the city needed to hire more police officers, Wu has instead argued for civilian responses to some emergency calls in crisis situations.

“We need to have a structural and cultural change to how we think about public safety — and particularly the police department in Boston — so that we’re meeting residents where they’re at and building trust,” Wu said in an interview with the city’s public radio station.

Compared to mayoral contests in New York City and elsewhere, crime was not a central issue in the Boston race, in large part because the city did not see a crime spike during the coronavirus pandemic.

The major issue in the race was instead housing affordability. There, Wu stood alone among an initially crowded field in calling for a revival of rent control in the city. Wu would need to convince the state legislature to remove a statewide ban on rent control laws in order to implement it. She’s also called for increasing the supply of affordable housing and overhauling the city’s notoriously complex zoning and development process.

Wu was raised in Chicago, where she often served as the unofficial interpreter for her Chinese-speaking parents as a child. She says she never imagined one day running for mayor.

Growing up in a Taiwanese family, Wu said she was discouraged from being confrontational or talking about herself in public. And she believed that she didn’t have the traits normally associated with politicians.

“I was none of those things,” Wu said. “Not tall, male, angry, loud.”

In 2003, Wu moved east to attend Harvard as an undergraduate. After she graduated, her mother suffered a mental health crisis. Wu returned to Chicago to help take care of her and her two younger sisters. She opened a small teahouse, but struggled to make it work. So, she headed back to Massachusetts to attend Harvard Law School, this time bringing her family with her. She also served as legal guardian to her younger sister, Victoria.

At Harvard, she studied contract law with Elizabeth Warren, and later worked on Warren’s first campaign for U.S. Senate, becoming a political protégé of the state’s senior senator.

Wu said her own experience, including struggling with her mother’s mental health crisis and her sisters’ schools and her own effort to start a small business propelled her into politics. She said those experiences “burst the bubble on trying to stay away from politics and government.”

“It just mattered so much, and so many other people in similar situations were struggling with that,” Wu said.

She now faces the challenge of transforming an aspirational campaign into a workable plan to govern the city.

Wu campaigned on the idea that Boston leadership needs to take bold action to fight issues with the status quo. One of her most well-known promises is to “Free the T” and create fare-free public transit across the city. She also released a city-level Green New Deal agenda to address climate change.

She’s pledged a commitment to citywide carbon neutrality by 2040, using 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2030 and having a net-zero municipal footprint by 2024. Under her plan, all school buses would be replaced with electric buses and the number of trees on city streets will be doubled.

During Wu’s first 100 days, she wants to expand outreach funding to address homelessness and drug use at Mass and Cass. She would like to expand treatment in partnership with community health centers, and address the root causes of the housing crisis.

In the first debate, Wu said buildings owned by the city would be audited to see where it could provide short-term housing for the homeless. She believes reopening the Long Island Bridge is a solution that would take too long to go into effect.

Wu wants to streamline the processes in place to create more affordable housing in the city, using city-owned land to add more units. She has also said she won’t shy away from using rent control to prevent displacement if necessary.

Wu said it is a priority that the next police commissioner immediately starts working on a new police union contract. She believes police should operate under a public health-led response and there should be more accountability when it comes to the budget and misconduct.

On education, she campaigned on a promise to improve the school assignment process in the city to reflect equity. She also favors universal pre-kindergarten and vocational education, and renovating facilities.

(SD-Agencies)