NEW YORK, Nov 6: Liberal Democrat Bill de Blasio cruised to victory in the race to succeed New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, marking the first time a Democrat has captured City Hall in two decades.
De Blasio, the city’s public advocate, was leading Republican rival Joe Lhota 73 per cent to 24 per cent after a campaign in which he railed against economic inequality in America’s most populous city, with 56 per cent of precincts reporting Yesterday.
“My fellow New Yorkers: today, you spoke out loudly and clearly for a new direction in our city, united by a belief that our city should leave no New Yorker behind,” de Blasio told a gathering of about 2,000 revelers last night in Brooklyn. “The growing inequality we see, the crisis of affordability we face, it has been decades in the making. But its slow creep upon this city cannot weaken our resolve.”
After promising to close the gap between the rich and poor, he now faces the challenge of high expectations – keeping crime at historic lows and reaching a long-overdue wage deal with the city workers’ unions.
(1.96-meter) tall de Blasio won a hotly contested Democratic primary in September by focusing on the controversial “stop-and-frisk” police tactic endorsed by Bloomberg and by criticizing the billionaire mayor for presiding over “two New Yorks” – one rich, one poor.
He also promoted expanding access to pre-kindergarten, proposing a tax on the city’s highest earners to pay for it, and said he would fight to save community hospitals from closing.
But it was de Blasio’s charismatic, biracial family that offered perhaps the biggest boost.
A campaign ad featuring de Blasio’s teenage son, Dante, who sports a tall Afro, argued that the police department’s stop-and-frisk policy unfairly targets young, black men and was easily the most discussed ad of the campaign, transforming Dante into a local celebrity.
“He’s the first candidate for mayor in a long time that I’m actually excited about, excited about him helping to bring the city together and deal with issues of poverty,” voter Russell Neufeld, 66, a lawyer, said at his polling site in Brooklyn. —
(agencies)
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