So Bill de Blasio is Mayor of New York, the first Democrat
to hold that office in two decades. His populist message - the gist of which is
that New York City can flourish without leaving so many behind, and which
conservative are of course interpreting as socialist – gave him overwhelming
support. He got 73% of the vote; the most since Ed Koch, who later described
himself as a “liberal with sanity”, won by 68 points in 1985.
When de Blasio entered the race for Mayor in January 2013
nobody thought he could win. Early polls showed him in fourth or fifth place.
That he won with a landslide shows how frustrated so many New Yorkers were with
the old order and hungry for a new one.
De Blasio was born to a father of German heritage and a
mother whose parents immigrated to the US from Benevento, Italy. When he was 7
his father, who had fought many wars, left home for the first time and de
Blasio was 8 when his parents divorced. He was raised by the Italian side of
his family. When he was 18 his father, who had lung cancer by then, committed
suicide. So de Blasio has known hardship
from a young age.
He studied at New York University and Columbia University’s
School of International and Public Affairs.
In 1981 he got a Harry S. Truman Scholarship, a prestigious and very
competitive federal scholarship given to U.S. college juniors for demonstrated
leadership potential and a commitment to public service.
After Columbia, de Blasio worked as a political organiser
for the Quixote Center and was an ardent supporter of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Later he worked for a non-profit organization
that focused on health care in Central America, before he shifted to American
city politics in 1989 when he volunteered as a co-ordinator for David Dunkin’s campaign
for mayor. After that he worked as an aide in City Hall. Then for two years he
was regional director for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
During his tenure he increased federal funding for senior citizens’ affordable
housing.
In 1994 De Blasio married African American activist and poet Chirlane McCray. They're still married and have two children, Chiara and Dante.
De Blasio worked for Hilary Clinton’s 2000 campaign and then
ran for New York City’s 39th district. In 2001 he won with 32% of the vote. In
his second term in 2003 he won with 72% and in his third term in 2005 he won
with 83%.
On the City Council, de Blasio passed a law to stop
landlords discriminating against tenants with federal housing subsidy vouchers.
He helped pass a law to improve housing services for low income New Yorkers
with HIV/AIDS and another law to protect transgender New Yorkers. He also
passed a law to ensure that same sex couples in a legal partnership could have
the same legal benefits as heterosexual couples in New York City. During his
tenure, a law was passed that helped non-English speakers get free language
assistance when accessing government programs.
In January 2001 he was inaugurated as Public Advocate. In that role he was very critical of Mayor
Bloomberg’s education policies. He opposed proposals to eliminate free Metro
cards for students, and $34 million budget cuts to child services. In 2010 he
organized the NYC’s Worst Landlord Watchlist and in 2011 he organized parents
and communities to protest against cuts that would cause 4,600 teachers to lose
their jobs. Bloomberg agreed to find the money elsewhere in the budget.
In his campaign for Mayor de Blasio outlined a plan raise
taxes on residents earning over $500,000 a year to pay for pre-kindergarten and
after-school programs at middle schools. He also has vowed to invest $150
million every year into the City University of New York, to lower tuition fees
and improve programs.
He has also been very vocal in his belief that corporations
shouldn’t be allowed to buy elections and he has used the office of Public
Advocate to study how stop and frisk is being applied in New York. That study
revealed alarming racial problems. He
has called for new NYPD leadership, an inspector general and a strong
anti-racial profiling bill, as well as greater police accountability. He aims
also to increase police resources, and to work hard towards mending broken
relations between police and communities.
De Blasio also supports common sense gun safety. It’s going
to be an interesting few years in that great city. People who love to hate
liberals have pronounced New York’s doom. They almost gleefully predict that the
city will return to its days of out-of-control crime. But then they predicted
that the US would become a Marxist state when Barack Obama was elected. And
recent figures for the deficit show that it’s at 4.1% of GDP – the lowest since
World War II, and less than half of what it was when Obama first took office.
I think that de Blasio and New York are going to do just
fine. New York's success has been the result of twisted principles for too long. A society can
keep going for a while on that but eventually it disintegrates. Then leaders
with greater humanity have to step up. And in New York one just did.
