Michelle Wu is maneuvering to take away major issues from mayoral rival Josh Kraft as the son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft struggles to break through in the early days of his campaign.

Wu had the city council pass a rent control bill this week and moved to scale back and review bus and bike lanes, which Kraft was attempting to hijack and expose as a negative against the incumbent mayor.

Kraft had just introduced his own form of a rent control plan last week to highlight how Wu has failed to pass her own proposal.

But the mayor rallied her supporters on the council to approve similar rent control legislation as Kraft’s this week, preventing Kraft from getting traction on the important issue.

“Josh has been a candidate for mayor for just 10 days, so it is nice to see city government moving so quickly to embrace his policy agenda,” Kraft adviser Will Keyser said.

The lead sponsor of the council’s rent control bill, which would give a tax break to landlords who choose to keep their rents affordable, insists the vote was long in the works before Kraft started his campaign.

But the maneuvering was a stark reminder that the mayor controls the agenda and will be tough to outflank during the coming campaign.

Wu also delivered some tough talk against Kraft on his housing proposal – indicating she takes him seriously.

“The proposal is that this sort of fake rent control would be implemented,” Wu said of Kraft’s plan. “What we saw today was that this has been a distraction because the real policy underneath all this … is to dismantle affordability requirements, and in fact take us back to a time when it was anything goes for developers making money at the expense of affordability.”

Wu said Kraft’s proposed opt-in rent control program, which is billed as encouraging landlords to cap rent increases for a 10-year period in exchange for an annual property tax break, “is not going to capture or protect against the worst offenders.”

“The groundswell of support from all corners of the city for Josh’s candidacy is clearly concerning Mayor Wu, and today’s comments are a weak attempt to change the conversation away from her failure to create housing and real pathways to affordable home ownership,” the Kraft campaign said in a statement.

Wu also announced this week that she was removing a Back Bay bus line and was going to review all revamped street changes including bike lanes in the next month. By launching the review, Wu is addressing one of her major potential weaknesses — residents’ dislike of all the little-used bike lanes.

Michael Brohel, the city’s superintendent of Basic City Services, will lead a review of roadway changes across the city “and engage with local stakeholders and our engineering teams to identify recommendations for adjustments.”

Kraft has been highly critical of Wu’s changes to city streets including dozens of bike lanes and speed bumps that has transformed some streets into traffic nightmares.

But if Kraft isn’t careful Wu will try to run over him like those speed bumps.

One thing Kraft didn’t need this week was a reminder of his father’s closeness to President Trump, but Trump provided that by naming Robert Kraft’s wife, Dana Blumberg, to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts board.

Josh Kraft has hit back on housing, bike lanes. (Matt Stone/Boston Herald)