Michelle Wu scored huge.
In broad daylight and in entrance of everybody, Wu, holding a series noticed, simply “stole” Canada away from Gov. Maura Healey.
At the least she did so within the public relations sense.
Whereas Healey, 54, was slowed down over points like Canadian power, commerce, tourism and tariffs, in addition to conferences with Canadian premiers, Wu, 40, was in Nova Scotia felling an enormous Christmas tree.
The distinction was hanging.
There Wu was in Halifax final week, simply days after an unchallenged reelection, sporting an orange exhausting hat, wearing orange coloured lumberjack—or “lumberjane”—gear, making ready to knock down a 45-foot white spruce Christmas tree that was headed for the Boston Widespread.
It was a media occasion that politicians dream of getting.
Not like Mike Dukakis within the well-known—or notorious—photograph within the staged tank occasion, Wu pulled it off, regardless of the chance of a younger, slight, mom of three dealing with a series noticed. And he or she had fewer staffers along with her than Duke had within the tank.
She did so as a result of she made it look so pure, simply as she did in making associates, visiting a neighborhood faculty and mingling with the individuals of Halifax as if she had been campaigning in Boston.
And he or she had her husband and three youngsters along with her.
It was like an previous Hollywood made for Christmas film. The media liked it.
The tree, after all, is the annual present to the town marking Boston’s help to Nova Scotia following a devasting munitions explosion in Halifax Harbor in 1917.
Nonetheless, Wu’s four-day go to to Halifax is the primary time a Boston mayor went to Halifax to attend and partake within the tree chopping, somewhat than simply accepting its Boston arrival.
It was the kind of media occasion that Wu is so good at.
And he or she made probably the most of it, simply as she did when the massive tree arrived in Boston on Tuesday signaling the beginning of the town’s Christmas celebration. With Wu was Canadian Consulate Bernadette Jordan. Healey was not current.
The tree can be lighted on Boston Widespread throughout nonetheless one other media occasion December 4.
Whereas Wu was hoisting a series noticed that day in Nova Scotia—and lined extensively by an admiring media—Healey was delivering an unheralded and uncovered speech to an power convention of the New England-Canadian Business Council in Boston.
Whereas politicians typically mix official authorities acts with public relations, Wu has turned the mixture into an artwork kind.
The late philosophical Mario Cuomo, governor of New York, used to say, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”
And whereas Healey was dealing in prose in the case of Canada, Wu was campaigning in poetry.
Each Wu and Healey are profitable politicians who’re on totally different political paths. Whereas they don’t seem to be associates, neither are they election rivals. There is no such thing as a likelihood they are going to ever run towards each other.
However each have attracted nationwide media consideration and that’s the place the competitors lies.
The Democrat Occasion is in such disarray— with its lack of management, points and cut up between radicals and moderates—that it’s trying round for brand new management.
The place higher to look than Massachusetts? Healey, ought to she be reelected in 2026, will definitely be of nationwide curiosity, provided that she is an overtly homosexual governor of a progressive state.
Wu will get a great look too, given her efficient marketing campaign model, her file, her household values and her Taiwanese descent.
And she will be able to deal with a series noticed.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas might be reached at: [email protected]
