“The people of this city have chosen a progressive path, and tonight we set forth on it, together, as one city,” announced Bill de Blasio in his mayoral acceptance speech last night at Brooklyn’s Park Slope Armory.
He continued with the obligatory Spanish translation: “…Pero, una cosa es clara: la gente de esta ciudad ha elegido el camino progresista, y esta noche empezámos a caminar, juntos, como una sola ciudad.”
De Blasio, crossing all the usual barriers of education, race, and income, united 73 per cent of a tribal voting public under his sweeping promises to end the “tale of two cities” divided by stark economic inequality. Boasting a clean break from Michael Bloomberg’s unapologetically top-down regime, de Blasio promises an era of progressive politics—more affordable housing and fewer glossy condos, higher taxes for the wealthy to pay for universal pre-kindergarden, a scaling-back of charter schools set up under Micheal Bloomberg, and reform of the city’s stop-and-frisk policy.
Big Bill’s populist rhetoric may have won him the election, but the vast majority of New Yorkers didn’t vote for him. Turnout was dismal as usual. Of 4.3 million active registered voters in New York City, only about a million cast their ballots yesterday. But the show must go on.
De Blasio, who started his political career with his high school nickname, Senator Provolone, widely defeated the Republican Joe Lhota to become the first Democratic mayor the city has seen in two decades.
Lhota’s resumè may boast more relevant experience—he was Rudy Giuliani’s deputy and head of the Metropolitan Transport Authority to de Blasio’s relatively humble post of public advocate. And while this overwhelmingly Democratic city has gladly elected Republican mayors before, they, like de Blasio now, had their fingers on the pulse—Giuliani with crime and Bloomberg with the economy. Lhota, by comparison, came across as a boring bureaucrat with an awkward manner.
Lhota tried unsuccessfully to up his intrigue by reminding New Yorkers in the final live debate that they “love an underdog,” likening himself to Rocky Balboa in his unlikely defeat against Drago in the iconic Sylvester Stallone film.
But unfortunately, de Blasio had claimed that slot months before. “I was the underdog for a long time,” de Blasio said last week. “But once the momentum built, it’s never stopped.”
Add to that a beautifully-orchestrated campaign that played out while his Democratic opponents tripped themselves up. Rival Christine Quinn’s links to Bloomberg weakened her reputation; Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandals utterly destroyed his, leaving de Blasio with an all-but-guaranteed victory from August, when his mixed-race son Dante and his out-to-there afro starred in the below campaign video that said to the world—"My dad gets it!"
