Bill de Blasio To Embark On Battle Against Inequality As New York Mayor

**Ryan Ruck** · December 30th, 2013, 01:36

Bill de Blasio To Embark On Battle Against Inequality As New York Mayor

Democrat who takes office on New Year's Day has become a new national voice for liberal causes

December 28, 2013

New York City mayor-elect Bill de Blasio waves as he exits his home with his son Dante and his wife Chirlane McCray in Brooklyn, New York, last month

Bill de Blasio, New York’s incoming mayor, is a towering figure not just because he stands at 6ft 5in but also for his unbashedly liberal politics at a time when the battle between the Centre and the Right dominates the polls.

New York’s first Democrat leader in 20 years will be sworn in to replace Michael Bloomberg on New Year’s Day, having won a landslide victory promising a major change of style and substance for America’s biggest city.

His Dickensian “tale of two cities” campaign mantra is already being echoed by liberals well beyond New York, to the alarm of centrist Democrats who fear that a populist progressive agenda could drive the party outside the political mainstream.

In a sign of the national focus on the new mayor, it was announced on Saturday night that Mr de Blasio will be sworn in by Bill Clinton, the former president, accompanied by his wife Hillary, the early frontrunner for the party’s 2016 stakes.

While Mr Bloomberg, 71, a pro-business media mogul, is a reserved bachelor who was occasionally accompanied on official engagements by his long-term girlfriend, his Left-wing successor will move into the Gracie Mansion mayoral residence with his mixed race family.

Chirlane McCray, his wife and closest adviser, is a black poet who identified as lesbian before their marriage; their daughter Chiara, 19, a college student, has just revealed that she received treatment for drink and drug abuse; and their 15-year-old son Dante turned into the star of the campaign with his telegenic manner and memorable Afro hair-cut.

Chiara de Blasio

For visitors to New York, the most immediate visible impact of the new era may by the disappearance of an iconic mode of transport - Central Park’s horse-drawn carriages.

Mr de Blasio has pledged to ban the carriages in response to concerns about the horses’ welfare, a stance that won him valuable support from the powerful animal rights lobby in the hard-fought Democratic primary.

Mr Bloomberg and Mr de Blasio have exchanged thinly-veiled jibes in recent days about the city’s financial future.

Mr Bloomberg has also gone out with a ban rather than a whimper as the city has introduced two final prohibitions — on electronic cigarettes and Styrofoam take-away packaging — in what critics call his “nanny state” focus on public health and the environment.

He has made clear that he will focus on philanthropic work as well as his national policy interests such as immigration reform and gun control after he leaves office.

What Mr de Basio has in common with his predecessor is that the new mayor will use the bully-pulpit of New York’s top job to advocate for a nationwide platform.

In the home of Wall Street, the de Blasio campaign focused relentlessly on the yawning income gap between most New Yorkers and the very rich. And he emerged from recent White House meeting between President Barack Obama as a new national voice for liberal causes.

“There’s a progressive movement in this country that’s having a real effect,” Mr de Blasio said. “It’s clear that something is happening around this country and that the inequalities we’re facing are becoming just fundamentally unacceptable.”

De Blasio aides are privately pointing to the president’s new focus on income inequality as an issue to kick-start his second term — it will be a key theme for Mr Obama’s State of the Union address next month — as indicating the resonance of that message.

But centrist Democrats at the Third Way foundation are fighting back, arguing that trumpeting talk of income redistribution will shackle the party’s national electoral prospects. “Nothing would be more disastrous for Democrats,” Third Way leaders Jon Cowan and Jim Kessler wrote recently.

Most immediately, Mr de Blasio is championing a tax increase on those earning more than $500,000 a year to pay for universal all-day pre-kindergarten programmes, expansion of paid sick leave and allowing undocumented immigrants access to state tuition assistance and driver’s licences.

The “top priorities” list that he released last week also included an overhaul of the police department’s controversial policy of widespread “stop-and-frisk” searches, a tactic championed by Mr Bloomberg as crucial to cutting crime.

The new mayor has however sought to defuse criticism of his policing agenda with his choice of replacement for Ray Kelly, Mr Bloomberg’s police chief. He has brought back Bill Bratton, the “supercop” who made his name in the 1990s as New York’s police commissioner when he pioneered the “broken windows” school of “zero tolerance” for even minor crimes.

In another appointment that has balanced pragmatism with populism, Mr de Blasio named a Goldman Sachs executive to a key position overseeing the financial services industry.

Mr de Blasio faces the challenge of matching his progressive politics with proof that he can run the city and its sprawling workforce. “His big challenge is to show he can lead the city responsibly at the same time as trying to make it more equitable,” said Dan Gerstein, a centre-left political consultant and advisor to former presidential candidate Joe Lieberman.

“Bill de Blasio ran his campaign as the un-Bloomberg candidate and benefitted from a terribly weak group of opposing candidates in the primary and the election,” said Mr Gerstein. “He is very like Obama in 2008. He ran a very good campaign but it was also extremely lucky in terms of timing and rivals.”

Like the president, he assumes office having promised much. “There are those who have said our ambition for this city is too bold ... [but] we are New Yorkers,” he declared in a victory speech.

**Ryan Ruck** · December 30th, 2013, 01:49

Bill de Blasio’s Radical Socialist Ties

October 31, 2013

Bill de Blasio touts himself as a man of the people, a forward-thinking progressive who intimately understands the needs of every New Yorker, great and small. He claims to be committed to championing the rights of the underdog and leveling the playing field to create more opportunities where few exist.

His played-out references to his multiracial family succeed in creating the promise of a post-racial New York in light of racially charged policies such as Stop and Frisk. But a closer inspection reveals another Bill behind the mask of the affable would-be leader, a man that would surprise, if not disturb, most New Yorkers if they saw him.

Bill de Blasio’s closest political operatives have been linked to organizations that are left-wing even for liberal New York — some of which that have engaged in anti-Semitic activity. And not a trivial college club membership or handing out flyers at a rally. These questionable organizations have done everything for de Blasio, from lining his pockets to providing him with the personnel to execute his bidding while serving as public advocate. Whatever de Blasio’s intentions may be, a thorough Internet search shows reasons for concern.

To start, a particularly damning Buzzfeed article linked de Blasio to a pro-Sandinista organization called the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York. In a fundraising letter signed by de Blasio, the Nicaragua Solidarity Network lauded the Sandinistas for having “humility that progressives have found refreshing and necessary.”

But the Sandinistas were not all talk. No, indeed: a big reason why the Nicaragua Solidarity Network supported the Sandinistas was because they were men of action. Some of the action taken included bombing Nicaragua’s only synagogue. Before that, the Jewish population fled Nicaragua due to the mounting political pressure. Let that sink in: Bill de Blasio had a leadership role in an organization supporting men carrying out terrorist acts, destroying the only Jewish community in that country. That’s a serious skeleton to have in your closet. The next mayor of New York should not have such blight on his record, especially in a city that has been home to many thriving Jewish communities since the turn of the last century.

But that’s just the beginning. De Blasio has also been endorsed by SEIU 1199, one of the East Coast’s largest unions. In addition to its size and influence, SEIU 1199 has communist origins, even going to far as loaning its space for an event honoring the life of alleged Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Chavez, who enjoyed business and political partnerships with other communist and socialist countries such as Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, had long disparaged the United States and contributed to the complicated diplomatic relationship between the United States and many Latin American countries.

The most worrisome detail in this ménage a communiste might be de Blasio’s relationship with ACORN, the disgraced grassroots organization alleged to have committed voter fraud. Some of de Blasio’s top campaign members came directly from ACORN, and his top advisers during his time as public advocate were either top organizers at ACORN or leaders within the Working Families Party, with whom ACORN keeps close ties.

At the very top of de Blasio’s election and advisory team, holding the reins and calling the shots, are people whose past involves leadership in an organization steeped in controversy. In addition to this curious information, campaign finance records show that de Blasio accepted contributions from SEIU 1199 and the Working Families Party.

The result of surrounding himself with far-left staff has been predictable. Emboldened by his friends and financed by the upper echelons of the Democratic war machine (they might pretend not to have one, but they do), de Blasio launched a campaign to prevent Target from donating to conservative PACs. In other words, accepting donations from liberal billionaires is fine but a corporation donating to a conservative coalition of their choice is not.

New York is not comprised of left-wing conspiracy theorists who dream of a socialist paradise, no matter how loudly the labor union organizers might yell. New York is home to people of all ages, colors, ethnicities, religions, and political affiliations. Bill de Blasio’s loyalties to socialist groups prevent him from appreciating the full spectrum of New Yorkers and raise the question of whether he is prepared to lead a complex and multifaceted city. Would you want a mayor in the pocket of unions with communist sympathies, or would you want a mayor who knows what you need and will fight tooth and nail to get it?