Talk about sea change. In New York, progressive Democrat Bill De Blasio was elected mayor in a landslide in a seeming voter rejection of NYC’s political and economic status quo — a massive electio victory that will automatically make De Blasio one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent elected:
Bill de Blasio, who transformed himself from a little-known occupant of an obscure office into the fiery voice of New York’s disillusionment with a new gilded age, was elected the city’s 109th mayor on Tuesday.
His overwhelming victory, stretching from the working-class precincts of central Brooklyn to the suburban streets of northern Queens, amounted to a forceful rejection of the hard-nosed, business-minded style of governance that reigned at City Hall for the past two decades and a sharp leftward turn for the nation’s largest metropolis.
Some pundits have said it’s important to watch de Blasio since he could symbolize an emerging generational leftward shift in American politics.
Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat who is the city’s public advocate, defeated his Republican opponent, Joseph J. Lhota, a former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, by a wide margin.
Exit polls conducted by Edison Research suggested that the sweep of his victory cut across all of New York’s traditional divides. He won support from voters regardless of race, gender, age, education, religion or income, according to the exit poll.
Over disappointed boos, Mr. Lhota, 57, conceded the race from behind a wooden lectern at the Gansevoort Park Avenue hotel in Manhattan, saying, “I wish the outcome had been different.” But he struck a defiant tone, mocking Mr. de Blasio’s campaign slogan, “a tale of two cities,” by quipping that “despite what you might have heard, we are one city,” and adding, “I do hope the mayor-elect understands this, before it’s too late.”
The lopsided outcome represented the triumph of a populist message over a formidable résumé in a campaign that became a referendum on an entire era, starting with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and ending with the incumbent mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg.
Throughout the race, Mr. de Blasio overshadowed his opponent by channeling New Yorkers’ rising frustrations with income inequality, aggressive policing tactics and lack of affordable housing, and by declaring that the ever-improving city need not leave so many behind.
To an unusual degree, he relied on his own biracial family to connect with an increasingly diverse electorate, electrifying voters with a television commercial featuring his charismatic teenage son, Dante, who has a towering Afro.
During the campaign Bloomberg got into political hot water by calling the ad featuring Dante “racist.” It didn’t play well and probably pushed some voters onto de Blasio’s side:
In interviews on Election Day, voters across the five boroughs said that his message had captured their deep-seated grievances and yearning for change.
The New York Daily News suggests de Blasio’s victory is a good time to also ponder the victory of New York Gov. Chris Christie:
We will begin to find out, and soon, if Bill de Blasio, suddenly beloved by so many who weren’t giving him a second look last summer, can actually lead as well as he campaigned, be strong somewhere other than in an amazingly weak field. He ran a brilliant campaign against Mayor Bloomberg and against what Matthew Thompson of Washington Heights called “stop-and-search” on Election Day in New York; ran like someone who saw the possibilities of Zuccotti Park and Occupy Wall Street and turned it into a political campaign and not just loud, vague possibilities.
Now, on this day when he won as big as he did, he would have been well-served to look at another big runaway winner on Tuesday, from the other side of the George Washington Bridge that is right in front of you at Holyrood Episcopal. That means New Jersey and that means Chris Christie, who has become the kind of leader over there who should make smart Republicans want to run him for President.
We knew nothing about how much game Christie had when he beat Jon Corzine, the way we know nothing about de Blasio’s qualifications to actually run a city the way Christie has run his state. What we have found out about Christie, though, is that he is a natural-born leader, the kind who doesn’t care whose feelings he hurts if he thinks he is right and needs to get things done.
At a time when you wonder if Barack Obama will always be remembered as a far better speechmaker and candidate than he is a President, you still remember him walking with Chris Christie in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. You remember, and vividly, Christie unafraid to stand next to the incumbent President running from the other party.
Mostly you remember Christie looking like the bigger man that day, in all ways. Now de Blasio has to show he can lead, that he can do more than make ridiculous promises about raising taxes on the wealthy because that sounded good running against Bloomberg; somehow command respect in Albany and in Washington, D.C., as well. Starting now, de Blasio has to do something more than be carried along by the roar of the crowd, and loyal opposition to rich, white New York.
Stay tuned. But with the size of his victory, it’s clear a Democratic star has been born.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.