Mayoralty of Thomas Menino

Mayoralty of Thomas Menino November 16, 1993[1] – January 6, 2014[2] (Acting mayor: July 12, 1993 – Nov. 16, 1993)
Mayor	Thomas Menino
Party	Democratic
Election	1993, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009
← Raymond Flynn Marty Walsh →

Thomas Menino served as mayor of Boston, Massachusetts from 1993 through 2014. He is the longest serving mayor in the city's history.^[3] Menino first became acting mayor in July 1993, after Raymond Flynn resigned as mayor to assume the post of United States ambassador to the Holy See (Menino's then-position as Boston City Council president meant that he automatically assumed the post of "acting mayor" upon the vacancy created by Flynn's resignation). Menino was elected mayor in the subsequent 1993 Boston mayoral election, and was reelected to additional terms in the four subsequent elections, making for an unprecedented^[4] and unsurpassed twenty year tenure. On March 28, 2013, Menino announced that he would not seek a sixth term.^[5]

After Menino's October 2014 death, Katherine Q. Seelye of The New York Times wrote that Menino "presided over one of the most successful urban renaissances in modern American history" as mayor.^[6] Dubbed an "urban mechanic", Menino had a reputation for focusing on "nuts and bolts" issues and enjoyed very high public approval ratings as mayor. During his tenure, Boston saw a significant amount of new development, including the Seaport District, the redevelopment of Dudley Square (today known as "Nubian Square"), and the redevelopment of the area surrounding Fenway Park. Alongside this development, gentrification priced some longtime residents out of neighborhoods. Allegations were made of favoritism by Menino towards certain developers. During his tenure as mayor, crime in Boston fell to unprecedented lows, and the city came to rank among the safest large cities in the United States. Menino also undertook a number of environmentally-focused actions. In the last year of Menino's tenure, the city faced the Boston Marathon bombing, an incident of domestic terrorism.

Menino was a liberal member of the Democratic Party. Menino led a powerful political machine in Boston and also played roles in national politics, such as serving as president of the United States Conference of Mayors from 2002 to 2003, bringing the 2004 Democratic National Convention to Boston, and co-founding the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns alongside New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.