Bad jokes and good times: Mayor’s race takes center stage at St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast

While the upcoming mayoral race took center stage this year at the St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast in Boston, the State Auditor and her push for a look under the hood at the Legislature may have stolen the show.

Speakers pulled their punches somewhat this year compared to last, but the gathering at the Ironworkers Local 7 Union Hall in South Boston, held annually ahead of the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade and hosted by State Sen. Nick Collins, still had its fill of disparaging jokes made at the expense of the guests, whether they were there or not.

Auditor Diana DiZoglio recast her quest to audit the Legislature as a Taylor Swift tune.

“I have this dream: the Senate President kills me for the money, she thinks I’ll find out was misspent. The Speaker meets her right outside my state house office, to tell the press that ‘I’m hellbent’,” DiZoglio sang to Swift’s 2022 hit single “Anti-Hero“. “They’ll tell you they’re allowed to break the law cause I’m too loud, and that it’s clearly all my fault. The audit law that you voted for just keeps going unenforced, because they’ve conspired of course, to say-”

“It’s me, hi! I’m the problem, it’s me. On your…dime — everybody agrees. I just want to shine a little sun, cause the voters said get it done — it must be exhausting always rooting for the antihero,” the Auditor sang.

DiZoglio’s musical digs came following Senate President Karen Spilka’s address. The senator began with a remark on President Donald Trump and his fashion choices, but then turned the jokes on the auditor.

“Can you believe, Auditor DiZo- I mean, Donald Trump, is getting away with all of this?” Spilka said, before bringing up Trump’s trademark too-long tie as seen during a recent meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“His tie was down to his knees. Did you see that? It was really long, almost touching his knees. I’m not sure which is longer, Trump’s ties, or the Auditor’s burn book,” she said, before asking “I don’t know — are we a Mean Girls crowd here?”

Mayor Michelle Wu brought the spirit of a comedic roast normally present at the event, but spent most of her efforts aiming her barbs at one attendee in particular: mayoral opponent Josh Kraft.

Wu took Kraft to task over his wealth — he’s the son of New England Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft — and his fairly recent move to the city. She opened with a “legal disclosure” that she claimed her attorneys asked she read aloud.

“On behalf of the city of Boston, I wish to affirm that the following material is fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events or actual persons, Republican members of Congress, border czars, nepo-babies, billionaires, developers — or State Senators shilling for the aforementioned developers and Republican billionairess — is purely coincidental,” she said, before eventually acknowledging Kraft’s presence in the room.

“Josh: welcome to the race, welcome to Boston,” she said. “Now, Josh is running as a man of the people, and it’s true. He is currently living in subsidized housing: a $2 million condo subsidized by his dad’s company.”

Kraft himself to the stage with introduction by Collins — who snuck in a dig at Wu over her own transplantation into Boston by way of Chicago — and apologized for taking so long in getting to the microphone from his seat in the crowd. He looked toward where Wu was seated at the head table.

“Don’t worry. Next year, I’ll have much, much better seating,” he said.

The Kraft took aim at Wu’s “$650,000 victory lap in Washington D.C.,” a reference to her recent appearance before the House Oversight Committee.

“You know she brought so many people there my dad offered the team plane,” he said.

Joekes aside, Kraft continued, “in all seriousness, the Mayor crushed it,” when called before Congress.

“She was right on point, her one liners were great. She pushed those Republicans back. So much so, that she now has my vote for the United States Senate,” he continued.

“Eddie Markey watch your back.”