NYC is getting closer to electing a liberal mayor for the 1st time in over a 1/4 century

[cali]

Today is the dem primary and it's now a race for second place. There's even a slim possibility that the progressive candidate, Bill de Blasio, will get over 40% and not have to face a runoff.

New York City Democratic Mayoral Primary Now a Race for Second Place

<snip>

Surveys out Monday morning revealed that public advocate Bill de Blasio’s unlikely surge had given no indication of abating, and as workers prepared to bring the city’s voting machines out of storage, the major question facing the race was whether he would clear the 40 percent of the vote needed to avoid a runoff.

Bill Thompson and Christine Quinn both banked that he would not. If they are wrong, however, and de Blasio is able to focus his fire on his Republican opponent in the general election in November instead of fending off a fellow Democrat in a runoff for the next three weeks, he will defy the conventional wisdom about New York politics.

Even a month ago, de Blasio was thought to be an also-ran. His careful cultivation of labor unions had come to little as labor split under the assumption he couldn’t win. If Thompson, a former city comptroller who lost narrowly to Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2009, fails to make the runoff, it will likely be because black voters rallied in large numbers for de Blasio. The public advocate, who is white, made made his African-American wife and their biracial children a central part of his appeal, but a loss by Thompson, the lone black candidate, would upend longstanding black voting patterns.

If Quinn’s political career ends Tuesday night, it will be a stunning campaign implosion. Quinn has led in polls for much of the past three years and secured the endorsement of all three major metropolitan daily newspapers and a handful of powerful labor unions. She has been closely aligned with Bloomberg, but polls show that women and gay voters remain unenthused about putting the first lesbian in the top job at City Hall.

<snip>

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/10/new-york-city-democratic-mayoral-primary-now-a-race-for-second-place.html

[PoliticAverse]

1. I trust he will work out better than the last one. n/t

[KamaAina]

2. Exactly one mention of Weiner.

[cali]

4. and after today, those mentions will be even scarcer

it's curtains for Weiner.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, cali.

[Jim Lane]

5. De Blasio is generally good but with a bad environmental record.

He's been supportive of far too many pro-development schemes, without regard to environmental consequences.

I volunteer with the Sierra Club, and de Blasio wouldn't even meet with us. I give some points to Chris Quinn for candor. More than once in our interview with her, she said, "Now, I know this isn't what the Sierra Club wants to hear, but...." and then said something we didn't want to hear. De Blasio didn't even do that much.

The Sierra Club ended up endorsing John Liu, knowing (well, most of us, anyway) that he had no chance of even making the runoff.

If de Blasio becomes Mayor, I hope he'll broaden his perspective. Maybe his problem is that he has so many union supporters; when these developers say "This project will bring jobs," the unions all too often give it knee-jerk support.