It's not just Wu and Kraft: Meet the Boston mayoral candidates not in the spotlight

On a steamy Tuesday night in Dorchester, a man trying to replace Michelle Wu as mayor of Boston worked up a sweat over a charcoal grill. Around him, music blasted from a DJ station, kids lined up at the Boston Police Department’s ice cream truck and dozens playing basketball worked up an appetite.

It wasn't Josh Kraft.

“ It's gonna be probably about 300 — a little over 300 hot dogs, burgers,” said Domingos DaRosa, a 47-year-old Hyde Park resident friends call “Mingos,” as he flipped a patty with a spatula.

The father of four has volunteered at the Beantown Slam community cookout in Ronan Park for years. He’s also served as a Pop Warner president and football coach for three decades, and he made a name for himself as an activist on drug and homelessness issues in Boston.

DaRosa knows that most city voters have probably never heard of him. The same goes for another mayoral candidate, 80-year-old Robert Cappucci of East Boston, who's also thrown his hat in the ring. But both men have collected the required 3,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot, and they’re hoping Bostonians give them a chance in the preliminary election on Sept. 9, when voters will decide which two candidates will advance to the Nov. 4 general election.

“I'm asking folks: just hear me out. Come see what I'm about," DaRosa said. "Hang out with me for one day and then you'll be like, ‘Wow, like this person really actually cares for the city. Not last week, but for the last 35, 40 years.’ ”

By any measure, both DaRosa and Cappucci face long odds of making it past September's preliminary election. Just 3% of respondents in a recent Boston Globe/ Suffolk University poll said they support DaRosa, and Cappucci garnered just 1% in the same poll.

Nor is either candidate raking in donations for his run. Neither has raised more than $6,000 during the current campaign cycle.

Meanwhile, Wu and Kraft, the philanthropist son of billionaire Robert Kraft, have dominated the conversation, the fund-raising tallies and the polls. Wu, polling at 60%, has raised at least $2.4 million, and Kraft, polling at 30%, has raised over $3.1 million, according to campaign filings.

DaRosa said his parents immigrated to Boston from Cape Verde when he was just 10 months old. He grew up in the city, and along the way worked as a city lifeguard, run unsuccessfully for Boston City Council three times, and now owns a property maintenance company.

He’s also been a controversial activist. In 2020, protesting what he saw as a lack of action by the Legislature on the drug-torn intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, known as "Mass. and Cass," DaRosa placed used hypodermic needles in front of then-Gov. Charlie Baker’s Swampscott home. He said the city’s mismanagement of the area helped inspire his run for mayor, and despite efforts at Mass. and Cass since then, the intersection and surrounding parts of the South End remain hotspots for drugs and violence.

“It’s beyond worse,” he said. “It’s like throwing water mixed with oil on the fire. It just spreads. So now it’s not — you can’t contain it. It’s citywide.”

As mayor, he said, he’d look to reinstate a needle exchange program and prioritize rehabilitation of the Long Island Bridge and treatment facilities. But the candidate, who identifies as politically independent, said education is his top priority. He also supports rent control and a fee on the sale of luxury housing to be used toward affordable housing. He said he prefers a scaled-back rebuilding plan for White Stadium that would serve only Boston Public School students, instead of Wu’s plan to share with a professional women’s soccer team.

One person who believes in his vision is 25-year-old Jerome “Stinky” Stephens. When Stephens was 7 years old, he said, DaRosa tossed him into the deep end of a city pool to teach him how to swim. DaRosa said the story was true.

At the cookout, Stephens said he admires DaRosa, the only immigrant in the race; the only Cape Verdean Creole speaker; the only renter; the only gun violence survivor. DaRosa was shot in the leg in 2018.

“ I'm not gonna say Michelle Wu doesn't do anything for us, but she's not somebody of this community. She doesn't know the ins and outs, for real,” Stephens said. “Mingos knows what it's like being thrown into the jungle for real and coming out and trying to survive it and everything.”

In fact, DaRosa has seen lean times, including nearly $12,000 worth of debt that went to collection in 2019, according to public records. He hopes those struggles translate to voters as relatability.

“ I am you. I'm late on my gas bill. I'm a month behind on my cell phone. I'm trying to get my kids through the schools. I'm trying to keep a roof over my head,” he said. “I've seen it. I've gone through it.”

If polling has DaRosa as a long shot, he's not alone. Cappucci, the Eastie local, has positioned himself as the more conservative option on the ballot, introducing himself at forums as a devout Catholic, a bachelor who’s committed to the job without distractions, and someone willing to work with President Trump.

Cappucci is a U.S. Navy veteran who served from 1969 to 1971, according to the National Personnel Records Center. He then worked as a substitute teacher, a Boston police officer and later went into real estate. Now retired, he may be best known for his campaign history.

Over the last 50 years, he’s run for office 13 times. He’s run for Congress, state representative, Boston mayor, city councilor, and school committee — which he won twice in the ‘80s.

He keeps running, he said, because he dislikes what he sees as “egotistical” politicians holding office, and he wants to be in service.

“I care about people,” he said. “I have one life to live and I'm there to help people. And I'm gonna die. So I'm not fooling around with my one life.”

Cappucci has frequently said, if elected, he’d turn to Trump for help funding city projects. He supports efforts to increase arrests and deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And he’s floated an idea to send what he called “problem” students from Boston Public Schools into the Boston Police Academy’s Physical Training program each day.

“That may be a way to get the energy out of them, to go into the police academy,” he said “ ‘OK,  You wanna be a tough guy? Let's see if you can do the PT program.’ ”

Political observers say it’s unlikely that Cappucci or DaRosa will advance past the preliminary, not least because it’s hard to beat an incumbent Boston mayor. But political scientist Erin O'Brien at UMass Boston said it’s healthy for the electorate to have options and hear other viewpoints.

In 2013, voters had to decide among 12 candidates in the preliminary contest, before Marty Walsh took the top spot. In 2021, when Wu ultimately won, seven candidates competed in the preliminary.

"It's good for democracy when there are multiple candidates, for sure,” O’Brien said. “It is a tremendous uphill battle for those two candidates to win. But you know, stranger things have happened.”

Both Cappucci and DaRosa took the same stance about their campaigns: if they lose, they lose. Both said they'll continue to try and help their communities. For Cappucci, that means daily trips to church and the gym. For DaRosa, it means firing up the grill.

“Til the last burger's done,” he said. “That's my commitment to the kids in the neighborhood. The least I can do is make sure that they all leave with something to eat.”