The Un-Bloomberg-Why is Bill de Blasio’s New York mayoral campaign suddenly surging?
By Sam Brodey
“Will you stay in touch with us?”
Bill de Blasio asks this of each potential voter as he stands outside of Trader Joe’s on 21st Street in Manhattan. He’s joined on the crowded sidewalk by two campaign aides and half a dozen volunteers. The potential voters are actually stopping to talk, and passersby end up waiting in line to speak with the mayoral candidate. A middle-aged man walks by and shouts, “This is the next mayor of New York City!” Cabbies honk and cheer as they pass de Blasio on Sixth Avenue.
This is all very new to de Blasio. The city’s public advocate since 2009 and the most identifiably liberal Democrat in the race, de Blasio saw his poll numbers surge in the Quinnipiac poll taken immediately after Anthony Weiner’s latest scandal. In late July, he polled at 21 percent, up from 15 percent, putting him within striking distance of de facto front-runner Christine Quinn, and essentially tied with former City Comptroller Bill Thompson. The surge continued, as two weeks later the same poll puts de Blasio at 30 percent. He’s your new Next Mayor of New York.
Weiner’s entry into the race seemed like a death sentence for de Blasio—one candidate was exciting, the other, less so. But reports that de Blasio is a boring, wonky city pol are a bit exaggerated. He cannily works the voters gathered outside the Trader Joe’s. It is a receptive crowd for the Brooklynite, the kind that eats up his familiar "tale of two cities" slogan and nods in assent when he prefaces a statement with, “Now, I’m not a CEO, but …”
It’s a line he uses often, and it’s carefully chosen: The CEO is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and de Blasio is the anti-Bloomberg, the empathetic, middle-class progressive who will roll back the legacy of Mayor Mike. Indeed, that legacy weighs heavily on each of the Democratic candidates, whose party has lived in the shadows of Mayors Bloomberg and Guiliani for a long time. It weighs heaviest on Quinn, the City Council speaker whose decision to let Bloomberg run for a third term is brought up constantly by the rest of the field as an example of the roll-over acquiescence to City Hall that has humiliated New York Democrats for years.
Read more at http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/08/bill_de_blasio_is_the_un_bloomberg_why_the_ny_mayoral_candidate_is_suddenly.html
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