In collaboration with leaders of Democratic ward committees from across Boston, several members of the Ward 4 Dems executive committee sent this letter to Boston Mayoral candidate Josh Kraft.
July 7, 2025
Dear Mr. Kraft,
As leaders in Boston’s Democratic Party Ward Committees, we work year round to promote civic engagement in Boston and advance the values and policies of the Democratic Party.
Among those values is transparency, and we write to ask that you make good on your promises to voters to run a transparent campaign. With just over two months until the Preliminary Election on September 9, we believe your campaign is withholding important information from the voters we serve.
Relationship between Your Campaign and Your City: Of greatest urgency is real information on the relationship between your campaign for mayor and the Super PAC, funded by Trump donors, that has spent millions on attack ads to support your candidacy. On June 2, Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi reported that your mayoral campaign and the Trump donor-funded Super PAC, Your City, share the same consultant, which appears to violate our state laws prohibiting any coordination between the two.
Your campaign has since claimed that there are “firewall” policies in place to ensure that the campaign and the Super PAC are acting independently, despite the shared personnel, but you have produced no documents to support this. We ask that you produce the firewall policies to us and copy the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF), where we have filed a formal complaint.
Potential Conflicts of Interest: There are also major unanswered questions for voters about your financial conflicts of interest and Kraft family business interests that could significantly impact the City and our neighborhoods during your tenure.
One easy way to clarify matters is to release your tax returns, as Mayor Wu has already done, and which you promised again to do five weeks ago. We are concerned that you are following a now familiar Trump playbook of repeatedly promising to release your taxes, without ever actually doing so. After injecting more than $2 million of your family wealth into the campaign, voters have every right to understand the conflicts your family’s business interests present.
You also serve on the boards of numerous educational institutions, hospitals, and other nonprofit institutions that interface with City Hall. Voters likewise deserve full disclosure about your role on such boards and your involvement with your family’s philanthropic work should you be elected.
Because of millions in contributions from Trump donors to the Your City Super PAC, this campaign has already resulted in more outside, negative spending than any race for Mayor in our City’s history. In light of the fact that you only registered as a Democrat after deciding to run for Mayor, and only a few years ago donated to hard-right Republicans Mike Bost (IL-12), Buddy Carter (GA-01) and Glenn Grothman (WI-01), Bob Latta (OH-05), and and pulled a Republican ballot to vote in the 2016 Republican presidential primary election when Donald Trump first ran, until you are able to demonstrate convincingly that your campaign is not being jointly managed by Trump donors and their consultants, we respectfully ask that you cease describing your campaign as “Josh Kraft: Democrat for Mayor.”
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn, Secretary, Boston Ward 4 Democratic Committee
Annie Rousseau, Chair, Boston Ward 11 Democratic Committee
Jason Aluia, Chair, Boston Ward 3 Democratic Committee
Carol Lasky, Co-Chair, Boston Ward 4 Democratic Committee
Christopher Freiss, Co-Chair Boston Ward 10 Democratic Committee
Ed Cook, Co-Chair, Boston Ward 15 Democratic Committee
Heather O’Brien, Vice Chair, Boston Ward 1 Democratic Committee
Patricia C. Amend, 2nd Vice Chair, Boston Ward 5 Democratic Committee
Aaron Jones, Vice Chair, Boston Ward 9 Democratic Committee
Grant Young, Treasurer, Boston Ward 4 Democratic Committee
Persis Yu, Treasurer, Boston Ward 18 Democratic Committee
Steve Backman, Member, Boston Ward 19 Democratic Committee
