In 1989, de Blasio joined the campaign of New York City mayoral candidate David Dinkins (D) as a volunteer coordinator. After Dinkins' election, de Blasio worked at the City Council as an assistant. The orders largely survived legal challenges and increased vaccination rates for reluctant police officers, firefighters and other municipal workers, leading De Blasio to extend mandates to workers in the private sector, the broadest vaccination mandate of any state or major city in the United States. De Blasio previously served as a public defender for New York City, on the New York City Council and as regional director for the United States.
When New York City became the epicenter of the pandemic, De Blasio's attempts to manage the response were frequently defined by the current public. He had a fight with the then governor. Not necessarily as one of his own, the man used a fork and knife to eat a slice of pizza, after all, but as a progressive leader who would return the city to its left-leaning core after 20 years of non-Democratic mayors. In a frank and thoughtful interview in which he addressed his regrets as mayor and the probable end of his political career, he said that the main of those mistakes was not staying “close to people's hearts” and maintaining “the personal bond that prompted him to come to the City Council.
However, he acknowledged that the period was traumatic for New York and said it largely contributed to its low popularity in some parts of the city. In response to the growing climate crisis, de Blasio and the New York City Council approved the Climate Mobilization Act (or New York's Green New Deal) to make New York City carbon-neutral by 2050, as well as innovative legislation to reduce emissions from buildings and end the use of fossil fuels in new buildings. On the eve of the former mayor's return to his New England home, a frank interview about his stay in New York. Later that year, when a gunman disturbed and angered by the police murder of anonymous black men shot and killed two New York police officers, the head of the city's largest police union said that the mayor had “blood on his hands” and officers turned their backs on him when he spoke at police funerals.
At the end of the last days of his term in office, de Blasio is thinking of running for a higher office, with the bet that his first achievements and his leadership in the city of 8.8 million inhabitants during the pandemic will affect New Yorkers more than problems and conflicts, separating the essentials from style. Some blamed De Blasio for the deaths of Ramos and Liu, for statements like the one above, and for their support for the protest movement in New York in the Garner case. De Blasio, a portrait emerged of a mayor whose public image was constantly eroded only in part because of his work performance; many, including some who were once his closest supporters, said that it was his didactic attitude that alienated New Yorkers. The mayor said he wasn't surprised that the New York City media were harsh and that the tabloid headlines were “colorful,” such as a recent cover of the New York Post in which they photoshopped him up to appear like a Santa Claus wearing a Fidel Castro hat under the headline “Claus Santanista”.
Current President Bill de Blasio defeated Sal Albanese, Michael Tolkin, Robert Gangi and Richard Bashner in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. Under New York law, candidates who run unopposed in a primary or general election automatically win the nomination or election, and their names do not appear on the ballot. .
