Michelle Wu scored huge.
In broad daylight and in entrance of everybody, Wu, holding a sequence noticed, simply “stole” Canada away from Gov. Maura Healey.
At the very 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 putting.
There Wu was in Halifax final week, simply days after an unchallenged reelection, sporting an orange laborious hat, wearing orange coloured lumberjack—or “lumberjane”—gear, getting 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—picture within the staged tank occasion, Wu pulled it off, regardless of the danger of a younger, slight, mom of three dealing with a sequence noticed. And she or he 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 buddies, visiting a group school and mingling with the folks of Halifax as if she had been campaigning in Boston.
And she or he had her husband and three kids along with her.
It was like an outdated Hollywood made for Christmas film. The media cherished it.
The tree, after all, is the annual reward to town marking Boston’s help to Nova Scotia following a devasting munitions explosion in Halifax Harbor in 1917.
Nevertheless, 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, fairly than simply accepting its Boston arrival.
It was the kind of media occasion that Wu is so good at.
And she or he made probably the most of it, simply as she did when the large tree arrived in Boston on Tuesday signaling the beginning of town’s Christmas celebration. With Wu was Canadian Consulate Bernadette Jordan. Healey was not current.
The tree will probably be lighted on Boston Widespread throughout nonetheless one other media occasion December 4.
Whereas Wu was hoisting a sequence noticed that day in Nova Scotia—and coated extensively by an admiring media—Healey was delivering an unheralded and uncovered speech to an power convention of the New England-Canadian Enterprise Council in Boston.
Whereas politicians usually 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 marketing campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”
And whereas Healey was dealing in prose with regards to Canada, Wu was campaigning in poetry.
Each Wu and Healey are profitable politicians who’re on completely different political paths. Whereas they aren’t buddies, neither are they election rivals. There is no such thing as a probability they may ever run in opposition to each other.
However each have attracted nationwide media consideration and that’s the place the competitors lies.
The Democrat Celebration is in such disarray— with its lack of management, points and break up between radicals and moderates—that it’s wanting round for brand spanking 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 very good look too, given her efficient marketing campaign type, her document, her household values and her Taiwanese descent.
And she will be able to deal with a sequence noticed.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas might be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
