Marty Walsh served as mayor of Boston, Massachusetts from 2014 through 2021.

Walsh was regarded as friendly towards real estate developers, and the city experienced a building boom during his mayoralty. In 2021, Walsh successfully added to the city's zoning code policies inspired by the federal affirmatively furthering fair housing policy. While Walsh supported Boston's bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, he ultimately reneged on his commitment to signing the Host City Contract's financial guarantee which contributed to the collapse of the bid. In 2016, Walsh's administration and General Electric struck a deal that saw corporation to move its headquarters to Boston. Walsh supported the passage an ordinance in the city council which regulated short-term rental of housing units, which he signed into law in 2018.

As mayor, Walsh successfully negotiated for a 40-minute school day extension in Boston Public Schools. However, his overall handling of the city's schools has been assessed as poor. Walsh served in the leadership of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. During much of Walsh's mayoralty, Boston struggled with homelessness at Mass and Cass, a matter that was unresolved at the time Walsh departed from office. In 2014, Walsh signed the Boston Trust Act, a so-called "sanctuary city" ordinance, into law. Amid the first Trump administration's federal hostility towards such policies, Walsh voiced his continued support for the city remaining a sanctuary city. In 2015, Walsh supported the passage of a city ordinance to provide municipal employees with paid parental leave, which was passed and signed into law by Walsh. At the end of his tenure, Walsh dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic's impacts on Boston.

Elections 2013

In April 2013, Walsh announced he would run for Mayor of Boston in the 2013 mayoral election. Walsh resigned from his position as the head of the Boston Building Trades Council position in April 2013 after formally announcing his bid for mayor, but stayed on as the president of Laborer's Union Local 223 and remained a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives while campaigning.Multiple sources: When Walsh initially announced his candidacy, he lacked substantial name recognition outside of his own state house district.

Walsh campaigned on the promise to champion a 24-hour Boston, including extending the hours of operation of the "T" into the night. The MBTA answers to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, which is a state and not city agency, but Walsh campaigned on the promise to extend MBTA service thanks to his tenure in the state house. "As a sixteen-year veteran of the House," he said, "I am uniquely qualified to negotiate transportation plans with the legislature."

David Scharfenberg of WBUR considered Walsh's candidacy as being, "built on his against-the-odds biography: a son of Irish immigrants who overcame a childhood fight against cancer and a young adult's struggle with alcoholism."

On September 24, 2013, Walsh received a plurality of the vote, among twelve candidates in the mayoral preliminary election, with 18.4% of the vote. As a result, he advanced to the general election, facing second place vote-getter Boston City Councilor John R. Connolly, who received 17.2% of the vote. Walsh defeated Connolly in the general election on November 5, 2013, with 51.5% of the vote, compared to Connolly's 48.1%. Walsh's roughly 5,000-vote victory was aided by a strong performance in communities of color.

Walsh received strong funding from trade unions. Andrew Ryan of Boston.com wrote that the general election featured very few policy differences, and that Walsh won, in part, by projecting an "everyman" image and sharing a "compelling life story" involving his immigrant roots, childhood battle with cancer, and his battle with alcoholism. Ryan also credited the general election endorsements of eliminated mayoral candidates John Barros, Felix G. Arroyo, and Charlotte Golar Richie as helping Walsh to overcome Connolly's initial polling lead. These endorsements were particularly sought after due to the three eliminated contenders' popularity with the city's racial and ethnic minority communities. Golar Richie's endorsement was also regarded to hold potential sway with many women voters. Another factors that has been credited for Walsh's victory over Connolly in the general election was a last-minute half-million dollars in television advertising against Connolly and in support of Walsh, secretly funded by the Boston Teachers Union. Connolly was a supporter of charter schools, and his education reform proposals had run into opposition from the union. David Scharfenberg of WBUR wrote that Walsh secured his victory for having, "built a broad coalition that stretched down the eastern half of the city — from South Boston through the heart of black Boston and into a diverse Hyde Park." Yawu Miller of The Bay State Banner later described Walsh as having won the general election due to the support of an "odd coalition of voters" made up of, "a majority of the support from Black and Latino voters as well as white progressives and his conservative-leaning Dorchester/South Boston base." Walsh was sworn in as mayor on January 6, 2014.

2017

In July 2017, Walsh announced he would seek a second term in the 2017 mayoral election. On September 26, 2017, he received 62% of the vote in the preliminary election. He advanced to the general election and faced second place vote-getter, Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson, who had received 29% of the vote. Walsh defeated Jackson in the general election held on November 7, with 65% of the vote, compared to Jackson's 34%.

Walsh performed strongly in many neighborhoods, including South Boston, North End, West End, Beacon Hill, Chinatown, Neponset and areas of West Roxbury, Charlestown, Allston, Brighton, and East Boston. Some of the neighborhoods that Walsh carried in 2017 had favored Connolly in the 2013 election. Walsh, however, performed weakly in Roxbury and portions of Dorchester. Roxbury is regarded to be the "center" of Boston's Black community. Walsh's opponent, Jackson, is Black himself.

Walsh was sworn in for his second term on January 1, 2018; then-former vice-president Joe Biden presided at the ceremony.

Relations with the Boston City Council Boston's strong mayor form of government had conventionally limited the impact that members of the Boston City Council had on the city government. However, during Walsh's mayoralty, the Boston City Council began to increasingly wield its power. The body yielded less to the mayor than previous iterations of the council had in the preceding decades, and also made use of its subpoena powers for the first time in decades. In December 2019, Milton J. Valencia of The Boston Globe opined that, beginning under the City Council presidencies of Michelle Wu (in 2016 and 2017) and Andrea Campbell (beginning in 2018), the council had "been, perhaps, the most aggressive in recent history in pushing reforms, often to the left of the mayor, on issues addressing climate change and economic and racial equity."

In February 2024, David Bernstein of Boston magazine wrote that during and after his mayoralty, Boston's politics had been shifting away from where Walsh's were grounded, idiomatically writing that in the city of Boston "ideological and demographic sands...shift[ed] under Walsh when he was mayor," and had "remade the entire landscape" in the time after he left office. Representative of this, he observed, was the increase of progressives on the city council.

Appointments and staffing decisions

Soon after taking office, Walsh appointed a number of individuals to his staff. This included Joyce Linehan as his chief of policy. He hired Eugene O'Flaherty as the city's corporation counsel. Walsh also appointed William B. Evans the permanent commissioner of the Boston Police Department. Walsh also reappointed a number of cabinet chiefs from his predecessor, Tom Menino's, administration.

In his first term, Walsh created some new positions and departments within the mayor's office. In February 2014, he appointed John Barros as the city's first-ever chief of economic development. In December 2014, he created the Office of Diversity, headed by a chief diversity officer.

Development and zoning Walsh was seen as friendly towards real estate developers throughout his mayoralty, and Boston underwent a substantial building boom during his seven years in office. During the course of his mayoralty, officials in Boston granted approval to 7.7 million square feet of real estate developments, including more than 40,000 more housing units. Steve LeBlanc of The Associated Press wrote in 2021, "during his tenure as mayor, Walsh has overseen the city's ongoing rejuvenation, which has led to challenges that include gentrification and rising housing costs."

In September 2019, after a city official pled guilty in court to accepting bribes in exchange for peddling their influence on a member of the Zoning Board of Appeal (ZBA), Walsh ordered an independent investigation into the ZBA. The resulting investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by members of the ZBA. Nevertheless, in February 2020 Walsh signed an executive order imposing a number of ethics requirements on the ZBA's members.

In December 2020, after it was advanced by a vote of the Boston City Council, Walsh announced that the city would become the first major United States city to put "affirmatively furthering fair housing" requirements into its zoning code. In January 2021, the Boston Zoning Commission unanimously voted to add them to the city's zoning code, and Walsh signed it into effect that month.

In January 2015, Walsh filed a lawsuit in an effort to stop a casino from being built in nearby Everett, Massachusetts. He dropped his legal objections in January 2016, after striking a deal between the city of Boston and Wynn Resorts, who were behind the Everett casino project.

Walsh supported an ordinance in the city council which regulated short-term rental of housing units. It passed in the City Council, and he signed it into law in June 2018. The ordinance restricted short-term rentals to owner-occupied housing units, required hosts to register with the city, and required the city to collect and publish data on short-term rentals. Airbnb sued the city over the ordinance; the suit was settled in August 2019 with an agreement which included having Airbnb hosts in Boston enter their ordinance-required city-issued registration number into the website, or face having their listings removed from the website.

In July 2020, construction began on a remodel of Boston City Hall Plaza, which Walsh and his administration had been working for years on planning for years.

Economic matters

After Walsh left office, the editorial board of The Boston Globe would opine that, as mayor, Walsh, "kept Boston on an even keel financially and invited economic growth". Similarly, Bill Forry of the Dorchester Reporter wrote that, prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Walsh's tenure was characterized by, "remarkable growth and relative peace and prosperity." During Walsh's tenure, Boston maintained a AAA bond credit rating.

In January 2016, Boston struck a deal for General Electric to move their headquarters to the city. The city, together with the state government of Massachusetts, offered General Electric a combined $140 million in business incentives ($120 million in grants, and $25 million in city tax relief). Some critics argued that Boston had given General Electric a "sweetheart deal". However, The Boston Globe jointly named four deputies of Walsh and Governor Charlie Baker who had been involved in striking the deal as their "Bostonians of the Year" for their roles in the deal.

Education