De Blasio easily wins Democratic nomination for NYC mayor, sets sights on general

Mayor Bill de Blasio rolled one step closer to re-election on Tuesday night, coasting to the Democratic nomination by easily defeating a handful of little-known challengers who struggled to gain traction for their criticisms of the mayor and his administration.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, de Blasio led the field with 74.6 percent of the vote, according to preliminary Board of Election data published on Tuesday.

The easy victory comes four years after de Blasio, a former City Councilman and public advocate, vaulted to prominence by winning a crowded Democratic primary on a left-leaning message of fighting income inequality, improving police community relations and building affordable housing.

De Blasio echoed that theme in a victory speech on Tuesday night before laying out a loose agenda for his second term.

“We’ve got more to do. I’ve seen up close the challenges too, I’ve seen the ways we still need to build a fairer city and I’m not going to stop until we build that fairer city for every New Yorker,” de Blasio said to a crowd of roughly 200 supporters at Roulette, a concert hall in downtown Brooklyn.

The mayor, introduced by his wife Chirlane McCray, revisited some accomplishments of his first term, including universal pre-K and continued drops in crime.

De Blasio, who has struggled to define his national profile as he seeks to position himself as a foil to President Donald Trump, made no mention of the president or his Republican challenger Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis.

Despite calling the primary win a “resounding victory” he encouraged supporters to continue volunteering their time and donating their money to his campaign.

De Blasio’s path to the nomination seemed all but assured in March, when state and federal prosecutors declined to bring charges against him after a long-running probe into his campaign fundraising.

Getting off scott-free. Like Hillary.

After several decades of unadulterated liberalism, New York City elected Rudolph Giuliani as mayor. While by no means a conservative by national standards, he was a law and order man who effectively suppressed crime and helped revive the economy through the re-establishment of civil order. The city's boom of the mid-1990s and thereafter was rooted in his actions. Otherwise, it would have gone on the path of Chicago, Baltimore, or even Detroit.

There have been demographic changes in the last 20 years. The non-Jewish white working and middle classes have declined in real numbers and as a percentage of the population. The Asian population has exploded, as has the population of white singles, childless couples, and homosexuals, often from other parts of the country. Shows like Cash Cab often have people whose speech patterns were formed in places like California or Ohio, as opposed to the traditional New York accent of people like Trump or Schumer.

Under these circumstances, can another Giuliani arise and reverse the soft policing and overregulation of De Blasio?

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