New York City Hall
On January 1, 2014, New Year's Day, a new Mayor of New York will be sworn in at City Hall. On that day, that Mayor will give a speech that will be heard by the national media, and broadcast in various outlets throughout the world. That Mayor will likely be on various television programs like morning and late night talk shows. That Mayor will have a national megaphone, with which he can discuss whatever he sees fit. As I've
written, Democrats everywhere should care who that person is going into the 2014 election cycle.
A new New York Times poll out today confirms what other polls have been finding, that New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio of Brooklyn is growing stronger every day. According to the Times:
Mr. de Blasio’s campaign, fueled by a relentless focus on economic disparity and a searing critique of the Bloomberg administration, has transcended the city’s traditional demographic divisions: he is drawing higher levels of support from men and women, older and younger, than any of his rivals.
Bill de Blasio is winning the white vote, the black vote and the Latino vote. He is winning votes from liberals and moderates. The sharpest divisions in the party right now are ones of class. De Blasio, more than any New York candidate in recent history, is most certainly running a class-based campaign. Even Politico
picked up on this:
De Blasio, an outer-borough Italian-American who does not code as the media archetype of an “angry” white “ethnic,” purportedly lacks the demographic base of Quinn or Thompson, an African-American. But his campaign is driven by class, albeit in a way that overlaps with the two-thirds of New Yorkers who are non-white. A former member of the City Council, and the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate run, de Blasio has run a frankly economically redistributive campaign, painting the other Democratic candidates as merely fresh incarnations of Michael Bloomberg, the outgoing plutocratic mayor.
Democrats need to make a statement to the nation about whose side we are on. We need people to speak out on behalf of the people who do the real work in this county. The people who sweat every day and come home dirty with aching feet and tired muscles. That is why Democrats need to elect a new Democratic Mayor in this, the greatest city in the world with the biggest megaphone outside of the White House.