Old New York

For months now, New York’s Democratic mayoral candidates have been strategically touring the streets of the five boroughs courting key voter blocs: Jews in Williamsburg, Hispanics in Spanish Harlem, blacks in central Brooklyn, white liberals on the Upper West Side, Chinese immigrants in Queens.

This year’s mayoral election, marking the end of Michael Bloomberg’s 12-year reign, has been optimistically billed by some as “post-racial.” That may be overstating the case, but this year, New York’s voting tribes are blurred to say the least.

In Tuesday’s Democratic primary, Bill de Blasio romped home with 40 per cent of the votes, the percentage needed to avoid a runoff with second-place candidate Bill Thompson, who took 26 per cent. Thompson, who has relied on support from key black leaders in New York, performed poorly among the black community on Tuesday, perhaps because—in the words of Brian Lehrer, the veteran host of WNYC radio’s flagship politics program— “black voters vote for the black candidate that they think can win.”

In this case, that wasn’t Bill Thompson, it was Bill de Blasio, the “tall white one” with a biracial family and an Obama ’08-esque message of hope and change for the “disappearing middle class.” De Blasio won almost all the key demographics: the black vote, the white vote, the Hispanic vote and the high-income vote. He even coaxed the gay vote away from Christine Quinn, a lesbian and the only female frontrunner, who campaigned heavily in the gay areas of Manhattan.

The de Blasio camp celebrated with a block party in the Gowanus neighbourhood of Brooklyn, featuring soul music, artisanal food trucks, and a performance of the de Blasio family dance, “the smack down.” Flanked by his wife Chirlene McCray, a black poet, and their two children, the new prince of Brooklyn thanked his supporters for launching his campaign into “the early stages of a movement” to unite a city divided by inequality.

Even Thompson’s own campaign chief has conceded that de Blasio’s victory is “decisive.” Interest groups are rushing to offer de Blasio their endorsement and some key black leaders like Reverend Al Sharpton are hinting at a de Blasio endorsement.

Pandering to interest groups has been the name of the game for this year’s Democrats, which only reminds us of perhaps the most significant fact of this mayoral race: for the first time in three terms, it won’t be Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg, who has been in office since 2001, is so exquisitely wealthy that garnering favour, and cash, from special interest groups has never been part of his repertoire. Bloomberg spent $260 million of his own $27bn fortune over the course of his three mayoral campaigns.

During his time as mayor, Bloomberg has been dogged by criticism that he has turned Manhattan into a playground for the super-rich. But he is unrepentant. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, he stated his case frankly: “If we can find a bunch of billionaires around the world to move here, that would be a godsend, because that’s where the revenue comes to take care of everybody else…The way to help those who are less fortunate is, number one, to attract more very fortunate people.”

With the Republican candidate, Joe Llhota, lagging way behind in the polls, it looks like Bloomberg will be handing over the keys to Gracie Mansion in December to a man who has sold himself as his antidote: the “unapologetically progressive” champion of the 99 per cent who runs the risk of alienating the 1 per cent. Luckily for de Blasio, there are more votes in the 99 per cent demographic.

Centring his campaign around a “tale of two cities” rhetoric, de Blasio has vowed to reinvigorate a “disappearing” middle class. In an exit poll from Tuesday, 3 out of 4 Democratic voters said they wanted a change from “Bloombergism.” When it comes to crime, this means reconsidering the centrepiece of Bloomberg’s tough-on-crime stance: the controversial policy of stop-and-frisk.

Back in August, a federal ruling stated that the NYPD’s implementation of stop-and-frisk was unconstitutional and racially discriminatory. Bloomberg, who is planning to appeal,  has said the judge is “just wrong.” De Blasio, meanwhile, has vowed to reform the NYPD first and foremost by replacing Bloomberg’s police commissioner Ray Kelly, who was charged with implementing the policy. But the awkward question mark over crime in New York City is whether a new mayor can reform the use of the tactic without allowing crime rates to creep up again.

“Most of our crime is in two neighbourhoods: southeast Bronx, central Brooklyn. All minority males 15 to 25,” says Bloomberg. If Bloomberg’s evaluation is right, achieving a seamless reform of stop-and-frisk while keeping crime down will prove one of the mayor’s greatest challenges.

But regardless of the real challenges ahead, on the campaign trail de Blasio has masterfully highlighted his commitment to fair policing by enlisting his biracial family to hammer home the message. In his interview with New York, Bloomberg called de Blasio’s campaign tactics, which heavily feature his black wife and their two teenage children, “racist”—a statement he later asked the magazine to amend.

De Blasio’s opponents criticised him for his campaign trail showboating—but it worked. De Blasio shot up in the polls after a 30-second TV spot featuring his son Dante, whose spectacular afro has become a major feature of the election, proclaiming that his dad was the only candidate who would “end a stop and frisk era which unfairly targets people of colour.”

Entering a post-Bloomberg New York marks a return to more traditional politics of race cards, mud-slinging and trying to please everyone. In New York, that means a return to tribal politics, however blurred, and another vote for those nebulous concepts of hope and change.