Mayor Michelle Wu, Super-Star

By Shlomo Maital   

     Consider Michelle Wu, Mayor of Boston.   Daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she was the first Asian American woman to serve on the Boston City Council, from 2014 to 2021, and she was its president from 2016–2018.  She is the first woman and first non-white person to have been elected mayor of Boston.  And at 36 years of age, she is also the youngest person elected to the position in nearly a century.

       On November 2, 2021, Wu won the mayoralty election with over 64% of the vote, a whopping margin even for pro-Democrat Boston.

     The other day, she was piano soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra, conducted by Keith Lockhart, and played George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, to rapturous cheers.

      All this, while running Boston – and to boot, Michelle Wu is pregnant, expecting another child.  She is the mother of two boys.

        According to Wikipedia, “When Wu was in her early twenties, having recently graduated from Harvard University, and living in Boston and working for Boston Consulting Group, her mother developed severe mental illness and was diagnosed with schizophrenia.  Wu returned to the family home in the Chicago suburbs to care for the mother and raise her two youngest siblings.”

       Wu secured medical care for her mother, and she also opened a teahouse, hoping her mother might recover enough to run it. Eventually, she entered Harvard Law School and relocated with her mother and youngest sibling to Boston.

        At Harvard, she became a close friend of Elizabeth Warren, now Massachusetts Senator.

       As soloist, when she completed the last bars of Gershwin’s amazing piece, she put her face in her hands with emotion —  she confessed that as Mayor of Boston, a city of 650,000, she does not have enough time to practice. 

        Michelle Wu, Super-Star,  for President of the United States?