A DOZEN PEOPLE have expressed interest in taking on Boston Mayor Michelle Wu as she runs for a second term. An attorney who works for her is among them. 

John F. Houton, who lives in the city’s South End and often walks to work, has been employed as an attorney for Boston City Hall for nearly 20 years. 

Houton, 58, has served as an assistant corporation counsel, starting under the late Mayor Tom Menino, continuing into the Marty Walsh and Wu administrations, representing the city in various legal matters. He is currently in-house counsel for City Hall’s treasury department, which handles money, property, and securities acquired by the city. 

He’s running for mayor as a pro-business candidate. “Boston needs new leadership, desperately,” Houton said, calling the business climate concerning and pointing to commercial properties still feeling the stress from the pandemic, which sent vast numbers of employees to work from home. 

If he gathers enough signatures to get on the ballot, his candidacy increases the likelihood of a nonpartisan preliminary in September, which would narrow the field to two finalists for the November general election. He previously considered running for mayor in 2017 and 2021.

Along with Wu, nonprofit executive Josh Kraft and community activist Domingos DaRosa have all declared their candidacies. Others have also indicated interest through filings with the city’s elections department, including Kerry Augustin, a 26-year-old receptionist for a City Hall commission focused on residents who are 55 years and older. Candidates must gather 3,000 voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. 

The grandson of Irish immigrants from Donegal, Houton was born and raised in Dorchester with five other children in his family. His mother was a nurse, and his father worked for John Collins, who served as mayor of Boston in the 1960s, and Attorney General Robert Quinn. 

Houton described himself as a Democrat. Publicly available campaign finance records show a handful of donations, most of them to Annissa Essaibi George, a city councilor who lost to Wu in the 2021 mayoral race. 

But, in an interview with CommonWealth Beacon, he balked at state lawmakers and city officials criticizing President Donald Trump, whose administration has sought to pull federal money from deep-blue Massachusetts and threatened to bring “hell” to Boston. 

“If we’ve got the target on our back, as it appears with the [Trump] administration, we shouldn’t be provoking the president. We should be working with the president. Even Tip O’Neill in his heyday had a great relationship with Ronald Reagan,” Houton said, referring to the Cambridge Democrat who clashed with President Reagan while he was US House speaker. “We’re going to be losing so much federal support.” 

Houton also called the city’s Trust Act, signed by Walsh and limiting Boston police cooperation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a “mistake.” 

Wu, in testimony before a hostile congressional committee earlier this year, defended the measure, while Kraft has said he is a supporter of the act. 

Houton took a different tack. “You’re asking if ICE comes to the city, if a Houton administration would cooperate with federal authorities? Absolutely,” he said. 

He said he also opposes “any and all forms” of rent control. “I understand the impulse behind getting a policy out to create affordable housing and control the rents but it’s really counter-productive both to the creation and preservation of available housing stock,” he said. 

Wu has pushed a rent control proposal, which cleared the City Council in 2023 but stalled at the State House. Kraft has proposed what he calls rent control, an opt-in program that would give tax breaks to landlords who keep rents low. 

Houton plans to keep his day job if he makes the ballot. Public employees face limits on campaigning and fundraising, which can sometimes hamstring their candidacies. 

Houton said he doesn’t interact with Wu, his boss, as part of the job. “I don’t have any enmity towards her. I think she was a good city councilor,” he said. “I just disagree with her on the approach.”