THE ROUGH-AND-TUMBLE of big city politics is a well-worn cliche. But when it comes to Massachusetts mayoral contests, it seems worn out.   

In a race that held all the suspense of a 1970s-era Soviet election, Michelle Wu was returned to office for a second term yesterday in an election where she was the only name on Boston’s mayoral ballot. It followed a September preliminary contest that looked more like a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition, with Wu running circles around Josh Kraft, who seemed less threatening challenger than hapless foil, against whom she could run up the score. (Kraft pulled out of the race following the shellacking.)

For the real bare-knuckle action in mayoral contests these days, you need to look outside the state’s capital city, where incumbents don’t just often face serious challenges, but lose with some regularity. The odds certainly heavily favor incumbent officeholders, but more than a dozen Massachusetts mayors have lost their seats over the last decade.  

Yesterday, it was in Everett and Gloucester that voters chose change.  

Everett’s swaggering longtime mayor, Carlo DeMaria, who has presided over a development boom anchored by his city’s welcoming of the state’s biggest casino, seems to have overplayed his hand.  

The state inspector general ruled earlier this year that the 17-year incumbent had inappropriately schemed to be awarded “longevity” bonuses, taking in an extra $180,000 that he hid from public view. Vowing to bring transparency to city government, City Councilor Robert Van Campen beat DeMaria by 9 percentage points – 54 percent to 46 percent – according to unofficial results posted by the city election department.  

In Gloucester, Greg Verga, who himself ousted an incumbent to become mayor four years ago, got a taste of the same restive-voter medicine, as former city councilor Paul Lundberg trounced him by about 15 points. Verga presided over the city during a divisive teachers strike a year ago, a tense time for the North Shore city that he seemed to further inflame when he was caught on video flipping the bird to a group of picketing teachers.  

In Boston, it’s been more than 75 years since an incumbent mayor was ousted, and even then it took a federal prison stay on mail fraud charges for voters to finally show the colorful, but corrupt, James Michael Curley the door.  

Under the city’s strong-mayor charter, and with a built-in base of thousands of city workers, incumbent Boston mayors have largely cruised to reelection since Curley’s fateful fall in 1949. 

Compounding the advantage for Wu has been the increasing nationalization of local politics, a development she has played as deftly as her piano rendition of Mozart’s Concerto No. 21 before a dazzled crowd two years ago at Symphony Hall.  

Wu, who campaigned four years ago on a vow to remake the city’s development process and other nitty-gritty municipal matters, has not turned any miracles during her first term. The problems spilling out from Mass. and Cass persist. Boston schools continue to struggle with abysmal student achievement. But she has become a forceful national voice against the Trump administration, a political home run in a city where the MAGA brand is toxic.  

That reached its zenith last March when an unflappable Wu more than held her own against Republican House members who had beckoned her to Washington hoping to inflict a congressional beatdown on “sanctuary city” mayors.  

Wu has eagerly embraced the framing of the race as a referendum on what direction the country should take, including in her remarks to supporters last night.  

“This year, against the backdrop of a federal administration’s chaos and cruelty, we faced a choice: Cave to the pressure, backtrack, and change course, or double down on the values that founded our nation,” she said in her victory speech. “That’s what’s at stake. That is what this election was about here in Boston.”  

Her glide path to reelection stood in sharp contrast to the tough battles that played out in other mayoral races.  

The politics of managing smaller cities can quite literally be more of a contact sport. “There’s nowhere for a mayor of a small to mid-sized city to hide,” said Ed Lambert, who served six terms as mayor of Fall River in the 1990s and early 2000s. “You‘re walking the same streets, you’re shopping in the same places, you’re dining in the same places.” 

He said the challenges are even greater because those communities often lack the resources and tax base that Boston has, making it a constant struggle to deliver basic services while also trying to chart a broader vision for the city’s future.  

He recalled co-hosting a fundraiser while in office for Barney Frank, the former Newton congressman whose district included a chunk of Fall River. He said Frank, in his remarks, contrasted serving in Congress to the much more hands-on job of mayor.  

Frank said constituents might go months without thinking about what he was doing on their behalf in Congress. “But he said there can be three reasons to hate your mayor before nine in the morning,” Lambert recalled, if the snow wasn’t plowed, the trash not picked up on time, or your property tax bill just arrived in the mail. 

“If you love your city, it’s a great job,” said Lambert. “It’s a level of personal politics that can be incredibly rewarding – and challenging.”