NEW YORK — The Bill de Blasio reboot is officially underway.
Three days after announcing a run for an open Congressional seat, New York City’s most recently departed mayor sat down on Monday to lay out a vision for his campaign — and if it’s successful — for a future representing parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan in Washington.
De Blasio, who met with the New York Daily News at Muse Café in Park Slope, framed his run as a return to his political roots, as a homecoming in a congressional district that overlays the old City Council district he once represented before becoming mayor. He appeared casual — with no tie and in New Balance running shoes — and came across as humble, while also exhibiting the sort of pride and self-assuredness that’s landed him in trouble before.
But above all, de Blasio began to broadly outline what he intends to do if elected to represent the 10th Congressional District.
His plans include tackling inflation by slashing health care costs, replicating the racial justice commission he created in the Big Apple on a national level and using the bully pulpit to push federal agencies to better address gun violence.
He also has some ideas for what the federal government — and the national Democratic Party, for that matter — can be doing differently, more broadly.
“There should be an urban agenda. There should be an agenda that says the federal government has to do the following things to help cities recover,” he said. “Right now, there’s not.”
To de Blasio, there are two ways to attack this. One is passing laws. The other is using the soapbox of Congress to pressure federal agencies into doing better while also working to better implement policies already in place on a grassroots level.
With the Democrats in jeopardy of losing control of both the House and the Senate this year, it’s likely the latter that will be more relevant if de Blasio wins.
To that end, de Blasio said he’d put pressure on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to act more aggressively when it comes to stemming the flow of guns to New York and other cities.
“We know exactly where the guns are coming from. We know how they come in,” he said. “The federal government could play a huge role in stopping them at the source and disrupting those transportation routes. ... That’s a scenario where we need to see more aggressiveness.”
De Blasio also wants to expand the use of violence interrupter programs, a policy he championed during his time in City Hall.
But it isn’t only an uptick in street violence that has him concerned.
One word de Blasio repeatedly used Monday was inflation.
During his last months as mayor, when inflation was first beginning to tick upward, it was an issue de Blasio didn’t appear very concerned with.
It is now something he’s clearly thinking about, and he contends it could be alleviated by lowering the cost of medicine and raising taxes on the wealthy — two policies that would be difficult to enact under most circumstances, and even if Democrats continue to maintain narrow control of both the executive and legislative branches.
Some of the challenges come down to how the message is delivered. De Blasio has found both success and failure on this front. His ability to capture the Occupy Wall Street zeitgeist in 2013 is an example of the good, while his alienation of the NYPD is one of the bad and the ugly.
“There’s a lack of a national Democratic message,” he said Monday. “You remember in 2012, the beginning of my mayoral campaign, I said, ‘We’re gonna tax the wealthy, provide Pre-K for every child in New York City.’ That was one sentence — communicated everything — that we are not accepting the status quo, that we’re gonna go after those who are wealthy and powerful and make them pay their fair share and give people something they need for free. People understood me pretty quickly. I think the national Democratic Party has to get to that place.”
Candidate de Blasio also pointed to the Racial Justice Commission he formed as something he’d like to pursue on the national level, as well as his baby bonds policy, which put money into savings accounts for city public school kids.
“I want to bring those same approaches to the federal level,” he said.
To help him get there, de Blasio has hired a team of experienced political hands. Political consultant Neal Kwatra, longtime adviser Peter Ragone and former City Hall chief of staff Emma Wolfe will handle strategy and messaging. Tim Tagaris, Sen. Bernie Sanders' digital guru, will oversee his digital and social media operation. And Alex Voetsch of Millennial Strategies, Rasheida Smith of Dunton Consulting and pollster Anna Greenberg will also serve as consultants.
The opponents de Blasio is facing include Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, Rep. Mondaire Jones and Councilwoman Carlina Rivera.
———
