New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's presidential ambitions are being ridiculed in his own city, where his reputation as a politician and personality have dogged him since he was first elected to succeed former Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2014.
“I think there’s a lot of hypocrisy behind his actions and I think in a place like New York people see right through it,” Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat who endorsed Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign back in March, told Politico.
Even Tina Fey weighed in this weekend, commenting at a Comedy vs. Cancer event in Manhattan that his running for president is like her doing stand-up," except I would figure it out because I'm not the worst."
De Blasio was re-elected in 2017, but his personality, as shown through New York's media and through his appearances on national programming, has created problems for the mayor's public image.
“Early on there was an imperiousness,” Neal Kwatra, a Democratic operative commented, and his attitude, along with a tendency to exaggerate his achievements, has created further issues.
He has claimed to create a universal healthcare program in New York and touted a "Green New Deal" law that he hasn't signed ― and then there's that time the mayor dropped Staten Island's groundhog on Groundhog Day in 2014, which The New York Post reports is coming back to haunt him.
“He has -- shall we call them --, popularity issues, not just because he roots for the Red Sox in the home of the Yankees and Mets,” MSNBC news anchor Brian Williams said Wednesday night. “His own staff members have called him stubborn, arrogant and entitled.”
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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