Boston mayoral candidate Josh Kraft says public records show the city’s bid process for the White Stadium pro soccer rehab project was “rigged” and is calling for an investigation into whether Mayor Michelle Wu violated procurement laws.

Kraft was reacting to a Herald report that shed light on internal emails between the city and Boston Unity Soccer Partners, which revealed negotiations to rehab Franklin Park’s White Stadium for a pro women’s soccer team were underway long before the city sent out a public request for proposals.

“The details reported today regarding the secretive and rigged RFP process between Mayor Wu’s office and Boston Unity Partners is extremely concerning and demonstrates misdirected energy and the wrong priorities, with BPS kids left behind, a community feeling ignored, and Boston taxpayers holding the bag,” Kraft said in a statement released Tuesday by his campaign.

“In light of this new information, I am once again calling on the mayor to immediately pause the demolition underway at the stadium. In addition, I am calling for an outside independent investigation into the mayor’s actions to determine if procurement policies or any laws may have been violated,” he said.

Massachusetts general laws require a public procurement process for city contracts for supplies and services, and construction projects estimated to cost $10,000 or more, to “ensure open and fair competition for contracts paid with public money.”

The city’s public-private plan to rehab Franklin Park’s White Stadium has divided the community and is now projected to cost more than $200 million. Taxpayers are on the hook for half of the cost that’s nearly doubled in recent weeks.

Speaking to reporters after an unrelated event, Wu pushed back on Kraft’s assertions that the bid process for the project was rigged, saying that such a claim was “inaccurate.”

The mayor acknowledged, however, that discussions between her administration and the private soccer investors took place ahead of the city’s release of an RFP.

“There was a full RFP process that followed all the standard timelines as established by state and city law,” Wu said. “Of course, we were contacted by the members of the ownership group when it came to the opportunity to keep the city in the loop about the potential to bid for a new team.”

Wu said the city generally has a history of supporting professional sports teams.

“Sports franchises, especially professional women’s sports franchises can anchor so much, in terms of mentorship and opportunity here in the city, and so we’ve been very, very excited to support on that front, and we’ve had conversations about what a partnership could look like,” Wu said.

Kraft, a son of the billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, said, however, that public records reveal the “extent of misplaced priorities at City Hall,” while citing remarks Wu made in her letter of support for the soccer investors’ expansion bid that was sent months before the city’s RFP was released.

The mayor wrote, in part, that she had “empowered every department in my cabinet to work closely with the applicants to identify the best location for a state-of-the-art facility.”

“While Mayor Wu has claimed that renovating White Stadium is about serving BPS student-athletes, this rigged process reveals it was never about the needs of BPS kids but about supporting the wealthy private investors and their pursuit of a stadium for a professional women’s soccer team,” Kraft said.

Internal city emails obtained by the Herald show Boston Unity Soccer Partners first reached out to the Wu administration about their plans to bring a new professional women’s soccer team to Boston in September 2022, when the for-profit group indicated their intense interest in Franklin Park’s White Stadium as the team’s future home.

Those emails show the eventual terms of the city’s RFP started to be shaped through seven months of conversations between Boston Unity and city officials. Those private talks took place ahead of the city’s formal RFP release to prospective bidders in April 2023.

When that RFP went out, it very closely resembled the framework discussed between the investor group and the city.

Boston Unity was selected for the project after submitting the only bid in June 2023. Eight months earlier, Mayor Wu had submitted a letter of support for Boston Unity’s expansion bid to the National Women’s Soccer League.

Boston Globe CEO Linda Pizzuti Henry is an investor in the team, but said last Friday that she was working to back out of the group.

The project, championed by Mayor Wu, has become a central campaign issue with Kraft calling for a pause on demolition until the courts can rule on a legal challenge from the community.

The lawsuit, set to go to trial March 18, alleges that the project’s proposed use would illegally privatize public trust land. The mayor has denied the privatization claim, while pointing to a lease agreement that would see the city retain ownership of the stadium, which BPS would share use of with the new pro team.

“It’s about time that what’s been done in the dark is now coming to light,” Louis Elisa, president of the Garrison-Trotter Neighborhood Association and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement.

“These documents clearly show what we have suspected all along: the rush to tear down White Stadium and permanently damage Franklin Park is being driven by the needs of a few wealthy sports investors and by the soccer league’s deadlines.”

Elisa said the “city and the team deliberately denied the community a voice until this backroom deal was done.”

“Further tree-cutting and demolition must immediately cease until questions about the legality and integrity of the project are resolved,” Elisa said. “It is past time for the appropriate state and federal officials to step in and investigate the secret negotiations that took place before the public bidding process even began.”

Opponents of the public-private White Stadium rehab plan to rally outside Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s Boston office Wednesday afternoon to ask Campbell “to enforce the state’s public land protection and public trust laws,” that they see as being violated.

The AG’s office did not immediately respond to a Herald inquiry as to whether it plans to get involved in the local matter.

The pro soccer team is set to take the pitch in March 2026.