Normally I’d say give us a chance to miss you — but the idea of New Yorkers missing Bill de Blasio is as laughable as his deciding to run for Congress.
Five months after his exit, as the city fights to surmount de Blasio’s wretched legacy, our erstwhile mayor lives it up in a four star Brooklyn hotel — despite owing taxpayers some $320,000 in misused funds.
Not to mention his overall $2.5 million in debt, which includes $300,000 in unpaid legal bills and $200,000 from campaign-related expenditures.
Oh, and a little pet project for his wife called Thrive, with $1 billion in wasted taxpayer funds that didn’t help even one of the mentally ill people living on the streets.
But that’s Bill de Blasio for you: Fail, fail and fail again — even at failing upward.
You’d think having all this time to pursue his true passions — oversleeping, working out (a little), napping, bitching about The New York Post, taking 90-minute strolls through South Street Seaport — would discourage de Blasio from ever again pursuing elected office.
Silly us.
“He just doesn’t care,” one staffer told the Post during COVID’s worst, bodies piling up in makeshift morgues. “Instead of working harder during this pandemic, he is working less. Who thought that was possible?”
One thing is clear: Bill de Blasio, like so many useless lifelong pols, loves the trappings of office.
As for, you know, doing stuff? Zero interest.
But because his ego must be sated, because lobbying or academia just won’t provide enough narcissistic supply, because he can’t get a regular job, we are yet again made to suffer Bill de Blasio.
He makes Hillary Clinton look positively restrained.
No matter that every single Dem who ran for mayor in 2020 said they didn’t want de Blasio’s endorsement and would turn it down if offered. Or that 40% of registered Dems said they’d be less likely to vote for de Blasio’s choice.
Or that nearly every media outlet in America said his only accomplishment was uniting liberals and conservatives in utter disgust with his job performance.
No matter that his 2020 presidential run was an epic face-plant, our man never polling above 1% during his four month run. Not even de Blasio’s fellow gym rats supported him.
Instead, as the New York Times reported, they papered his Park Slope YMCA with flyers begging him to drop out — plus reminders to clean off the equipment he used (ugh).
Next, after mortal enemy Andrew Cuomo resigned in disgrace, de Blasio teased a run for governor. It took him months to realize that no one wants him anywhere near a seat of power.
Donors wouldn’t support him. One-time staffers refused to work for him again. Who could blame them?
As it was, 31 of his executive staffers had quit by 2017, just three years into his mayoralty. As the Times reported, 22 of those defectors were women and minorities — a smack in the face to our smugly progressive mayor.
The top complaints? De Blasio was a condescending, indecisive micro-manager who talked down to his top talent. As one female ex-staffer told the Times: “You’re at a point in your career, where, why should you put up with the nonsense?”
Says every other New Yorker: Indeed!
But our former mayor remains promiscuous to the point of desperation, looking to run anywhere there’s a potential opening. It’s like musical chairs played by the most tone-deaf, bullying kid ever: Just three months ago, De Blasio considered a state senate run representing Staten Island, where he is reviled.
“He’s running for the presidency, he’s running for governor, he’s running for Congress — how does it look?” longtime Dem political consultant George Arzt told City & State. “Also, I don’t see where his votes are coming from.”
Arzt is too polite. No one is voting for de Blasio for anything, anywhere.
Yet here he is, planning a run in the newly drawn 10th Congressional district, for a seat vacated by longtime Rep. Jerry Nadler.
“He’s in,” state Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein told the Post, adding he had a private talk with de Blasio to that effect. “He’s running. He’s calling people.”
And there’s the rub: One of those calls was to his liaison to the Orthodox Jewish community.
It didn’t go well.
“He’s not going to get Orthodox support,” a source told the Post. “The average Joe on the street believes de Blasio is the worst mayor ever.”
Bill de Blasio has always believed he’s smarter than the average Joe. Unfortunately for him, that’s exactly whose vote he’ll never recover.
