Podcast: Play in new window | Download ()
Subscribe: Android | RSS | More
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday that he is putting his struggling presidential campaign out of its misery after he failed to qualify for either the September or October Democratic presidential debates.
“I feel like I’ve contributed all I can to this primary election, and it’s clearly not my time,” de Blasio said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “So I’m going to end my presidential campaign, continue my work as mayor of New York City and I’m going to keep speaking up for working people and for a Democratic Party that stands for working people.”
De Blasio, who was elected mayor of New York City in 2013 and reelected in 2017, blamed his poor showing on his late entry into the presidential race, adding that trying to run for president while serving as mayor of America’s largest city was challenging. “But,” noted Politico, “he found the time and funding for months before he announced to travel to Iowa and other early-voting states to meet people, deliver remarks and do other campaign-style events.” Once he did enter the race, de Blasio seems to have put most of his energy into the campaign rather than his current job; the New York Post found that the mayor spent a whopping seven hours at City Hall during the first month of his campaign.
“Most people thought that at worst, a presidential campaign would keep him stuck in neutral at home,” Eric Soufer, a consultant for previous presidential campaigns, told the Post. “But it actually sent him backward, by raising new concerns about his fundraising practices, energizing his critics on the left and right, and making it crystal clear that for whatever reason, New Yorkers do not think he’s in the same league as just about anyone else on that debate stage.”
In fact, a recent survey of New Yorkers found de Blasio polling at zero percent everywhere in the Empire State, including the Big Apple. He even had a significantly lower favorability rating (25 percent) than President Donald Trump (32 percent).
De Blasio’s campaign did not get off to the most auspicious beginning. He was drowned out by hecklers at a pre-campaign appearance at Trump Tower. A high-school student with a blog announced de Blasio’s candidacy before the mayor had formally done so. The radical leftist de Blasio, who has a long history of praising communists, made the faux pas of quoting Che Guevara at a rally in Miami, where it was not received well by Cuban exiles who know Guevara’s real record. A video announcement he sent to labor workers in Iowa distorted his voice so oddly that attendees laughed. Hardly anyone showed up for his campaign events.
The mayor’s fundraising practices were also called into question — and not for the first time. According to the Post, “he received hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions from people or businesses with interests before the city,” primarily from the Hotel Trades Council, which has directly benefited from de Blasio’s policies. On top of that, wrote Politico, “he garnered at least two complaints to the Federal Election Commission because he had quietly turned a political action committee purportedly intended to help other Democrats into an exploratory committee for himself.” Despite this, he was unable to raise sufficient funds to mount a full-fledged campaign and get into the most recent debate.
In an op-ed for NBC News announcing the end of his campaign, de Blasio wrote, “Fighting for working people and ensuring that New York City remains the vanguard of progressivism will continue to be my missions.” He vowed to continue to push for mandating an annual two weeks’ paid vacation for private-sector employees, “implementing universal health care and the Green New Deal,” and preventing workers from losing their jobs to automation. And he promised to “ensure our party continues to be remade in the image of the activism I’ve seen all across this nation.”
The last word on de Blasio’s departure from the race goes to Trump, who tweeted: “Part time Mayor of New York City, @BilldeBlasio, who was polling at a solid ZERO but had tremendous room for growth, has shocking[ly] dropped out of the Presidential race. NYC is devastated, he’s coming home!”
Photo: AP Images
