New Balance chairman drops $1 million on Josh Kraft super PAC

JIM DAVIS, the multi-billionaire chairman of shoemaker New Balance, is once again opening up his wallet and wading into Boston politics.

Earlier this month, he sent $1 million to an outside group supporting Josh Kraft’s bid to unseat Mayor Michelle Wu, according to campaign finance filings made public late Friday afternoon. The money went towards a super political action committee (PAC), which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, named Your City Your Future.

Super PACs are expected to play a large role in this election cycle, as political operatives consider them more impactful at the local level. While donors are limited to contributing $1,000 to a candidate’s campaign committee in a calendar year, super PACs offer the opportunity to donate a larger sum. Super PACs operate with fewer restrictions, though they cannot coordinate with the campaign of the candidate they are supporting.

Davis’s donation was by far the largest received by the pro-Kraft super PAC, which also took in six-figure sums from Robert Hale, the CEO of Quincy-based Granite Telecommunications, who donated $100,000, and John J. Calnan, CEO of a construction management company also based in Quincy, who gave$150,000. Marc Casper, the CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific, the state’s largest medical device company, donated $10,000. Spokespeople for the donors did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The $1 million figure is a little less than Davis spent in all of 2021, the last mayoral election cycle, which featured Wu and another city councilor, Annissa Essaibi George. Davis poured nearly $1.1 million into a different super PAC after a private meeting with Essaibi George, inside his Brighton warehouse full of classic cars. Essaibi George was considered to be the more conservative mayoral candidate, while Wu is a progressive mentored by US Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Davis, 81, has donated millions of dollars over the last 20 years to Massachusetts Democrats and Republicans, according to a review of campaign finance records, as well as nearly $400,000 to Donald Trump in 2016. In the last few municipal election cycles, he has focused on backing moderate to conservative candidates.

The Kraft super PAC is run by Rebecca St. Amand, an attorney at Vicente LLP, a law firm specializing in the cannabis industry. She did not respond to a request for comment.

The super PAC’s campaign finance filing also included one expenditure: $100,000 for digital advertising, sent to a just-formed company run by Jonathan Karush, who has ties to Keyser Public Strategies, a company that is advising Kraft’s mayoral campaign. Eileen O’Connor, a partner at Keyser Public Strategies, is a board member of MassINC, the nonprofit that publishes CommonWealth Beacon.

The Kraft super PAC has set up a Facebook site, with posts taking aim at planned school closures and the installation of bike lanes, which Kraft has also criticized while on the campaign trail.

The Kraft campaign declined comment, but one of its advisers, Will Keyser, said in February they would not wave off super PAC support, as Essaibi George unsuccessfully attempted in 2021.

Kraft, one of the sons of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, has already pulled in $733,000 in donations, much of the haul coming from the Boston region’s business sector, since he launched his campaign in February.

Wu, who has nearly $2 million in cash on hand, is expected to see support from super PACs, too, as she did during the last mayoral election, when the money came from environmental groups and lawyers.

Bold Boston, a super PAC that backed Wu’s slate of City Council candidates in 2023, received $100,000 from the 1199 SEIU health care workers union days after the union endorsed her in March.

In 2021, Wu urged super PACs to stay positive, and she sounded a similar note when asked about super PACs at her campaign kickoff several weeks ago in Boston’s South End.

“All signs are that there will be a lot of resources poured into this race,” Wu told reporters. “I hope that they will not be entirely focused on amplifying negative and false narratives about our city and the people who live here. But we’ve already seen some of that happening and I intend to make sure that the truth of Boston, who we are and what we stand for, remains front and center throughout the race.”