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MEET MICHELLE WU FIRST FEMALE MAYOR OF BOSTON

MEET MICHELLE WU FIRST FEMALE MAYOR OF BOSTON

Michelle Wu. Photo credit: New York Times.

A Female Taiwanese, Michelle Wu has emerged as the first female Mayor of Boston after a keenly contested election.

According to reports, Wu is also the first woman of colour to serve in this position.

Ms Wu won the elections for the office of Mayor of Boston on Tuesday, ahead of her fellow woman of colour and co-contestant Annissa Essaibi George, also of the Democrat Party. Ms Wu won by 62.2 per cent of the vote while George won by 36.8 per cent of the vote.

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“We are ready to meet this moment. We are ready to become a Boston for everyone. We’re ready to be a Boston that doesn’t push people out, but welcomes all who call our city home,” Ms Wu said on election night to her supporters.

Ms Wu, a daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, is the first woman and woman of colour to be elected to this position, putting an end to Boston’s history of only electing white men for the job.

Ms George congratulated Ms Wu’s historic win on Tuesday night. “She is the first woman, the first person of colour, and as an Asian American, the first elected to be mayor of Boston,” she said. “I know this is no small feat.”

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Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also tweeted its “heartiest congratulations to @wutrain on winning the #Boston mayoral race. We couldn’t be prouder of the 1st woman & Asian American to hold the city’s top job. More power to her as she keeps breaking those glass ceilings!”

During Ms Wu’s campaign, her focus was creating policies to tackle Boston’s wealth and race gap without excluding stabilising rent prices across the city and implementing free public transportation and a “city-level Green New Deal agenda” that meant investing in green energy and planting more trees.

According to reports Ms Wu was first elected for the office of a City Council in 2013 as the first Asian American woman to serve the city councilman. Then in 2016 and 2018, she served as the council’s first woman of colour president.

According to New York Times, Ms Wu is a Chicago native who moved to Boston to attend Harvard University and Harvard Law School and is now the Mayor of the city.