Michelle Wu, who entered public service out of frustration with the obstacles that her immigrant family faced, will be the next mayor of Boston, pledging to make the city a proving ground for progressive policy.

Buoyed by support from the city’s young, Left-leaning voters and by black, Asian and Latino residents, Wu, 36, soundly defeated city councillor Annissa Essaibi George.

Essaibi George, who ran as a pragmatic centrist in the style of former mayor Martin J. Walsh, had the backing of the city’s traditional power centres, like its police, its trade unions and its working-class Irish American neighbourhoods.

“From every corner of our city, Boston has spoken,” Wu said, to a jubilant crowd in the city’s South End. “We are ready to meet the moment. We are ready to be a Boston for everyone.”

Conceding the race, Essaibi George said, “I want to offer a great big congratulations to Michelle Wu.”

“She is the first woman, first person of colour, and as an Asian American, the first elected to be mayor of Boston,” she said. “I know this is no small feat.”

Wu — who grew up outside Chicago and moved to the Boston area to attend Harvard — was an unusual candidate for this city, and her victory sets a number of precedents.

She is the first woman and the first person of colour to be elected mayor in Boston, which has been led by an unbroken string of Irish American or Italian American men since the 1930s.

Kim Janey, a black woman, has served as acting mayor since March, when Walsh was confirmed as the US labour secretary. Wu will also be the first mayor of Boston not born in the city since 1925.

Malaysia Fuller-Staten, 24, an organiser from Roxbury, was ebullient as returns came in, saying the scale of Wu’s victory would shatter the image of Boston as conservative and insular.

“Boston is so much an old boys’ club,” she said. “For her to win by that margin, it would be saying to everyone, Boston is not a Centre-Right city. It would be saying, we are a city looking to change.”

Born shortly after her parents immigrated to the US from Taiwan, Wu spent her childhood interpreting for them as they tried to negotiate bureaucracy in the US. She was deeply shaken in her 20s, when her mother had a mental health crisis, forcing her to care for the family.

Emerging from that experience, she plunged into a career in public service. She developed a close relationship with Elizabeth Warren, one of her professors at Harvard Law School, who helped launch her in politics. As a Boston city councillor, she often attended meetings with her babies, a sight that announced change for a body that had been dominated by white men.

New York Times News Service