De Blasio wins New York City back for Democrats
Print Edition
Bill de Blasio has been elected New York City’s first Democratic mayor in two decades, running on an unabashedly liberal, tax-the-rich platform that contrasted sharply with billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s record during his 12 years in office.
With 13 percent of precincts reporting, De Blasio had 73 percent of the vote compared with 25 percent for Republican Joe Lhota, former chief of the metropolitan area’s transit agency.
In his victory speech, delivered in both English and Spanish, De Blasio declared that “our city shall leave no New Yorker behind.”
“The people of this city have chosen a progressive path,” he told a rollicking crowd of supporters at the YMCA in his home neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn. It was a far cry from the glitzy Manhattan hotel ballrooms that usually host election night parties.
De Blasio, 52, will take office on January 1 as the 109th mayor of the nation’s largest city. He had been heavily favored, holding an overwhelming lead in the polls for weeks.
Bloomberg, who first ran as a Republican and later became an independent, guided the city through the financial meltdown and the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He is leaving office after three terms.
De Blasio ran as the anti-Bloomberg, railing against economic inequality and portraying New York as a “tale of two cities” — one rich, the other working class — under the pro-business, pro-development mayor, who made his fortune from the financial information company that bears his name.
De Blasio, who hails from Brooklyn, reached out to New Yorkers he contended were left behind by the often Manhattan-centric Bloomberg administration, and he called for a tax increase on the wealthy to pay for universal pre-kindergarten. He also pledged to improve economic opportunities in minority and working-class neighborhoods.
He decried alleged abuses under the police department’s stop-and-frisk policy and enjoyed a surge when a federal judge ruled that police had unfairly singled out blacks and Hispanics. The candidate, a white man married to a black woman, also received a boost from a campaign ad featuring their son, a 15-year-old with a big Afro.
Despite his reputation for idealism, he has also shown a pragmatic side, having worked for both Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, and was known for closed-door wheeling-and-dealing while serving on the City Council.
Lhota called de Blasio to concede about half an hour after polls closed at 9pm. “It was a good fight and it was a fight worth having,” Lhota told a crowd of supporters in a Manhattan hotel before offering a word of caution to de Blasio.
“We want out city to move forward and not backward, and I hope our mayor-elect understands that before it’s too late,” he said.
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