NEW YORK — A liberal upstart campaigns on a message of change and a break from the politics of the past. His cautious opponent, thought for months to be the frontrunner and running a Rose Garden campaign, fades quickly as Election Day approaches — hobbled by a single vote taken years earlier and caught off-guard by her surging rival on the left.
A rough sketch of Barack Obama’s triumph over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Iowa caucus? Indeed. But it could just as easily describe Bill de Blasio’s come-from-behind campaign and Christine Quinn’s precipitous fall in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary this summer.
Hundreds of miles from Des Moines, there are distinct echoes of that Obama-Clinton classic here in New York, where voters go to the polls Tuesday to decide the finalists in the race to succeed three-term Mayor Mike Bloomberg. If there is a runoff, the likeliest person to get there with de Blasio is Bill Thompson, the lone black candidate in the race.
(Also on POLITICO: Robert Gibbs: Bill de Blasio is next New York City mayor)
De Blasio has vaulted ahead of Quinn and the rest of the Democratic pack on an anti-Mike Bloomberg message that has morphed into a story of “two cities,” a populist attack that has some hallmarks of Obama circa 2008. The city’s public advocate is running as an antidote to 12 years of a city government he says has catered to wealthy Manhattanites at the expense of middle-class residents in the outer boroughs.
“There are clear similarities in terms of the sudden rise of Bill de Blasio and the possibility that his elevation wasn’t recognized until it was too late,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn), a Thompson supporter. “If you kind of trace the trajectory of the Clinton versus Obama dynamic, it was a very similar narrative.”
De Blasio has used social media and featured his biography and biracial family heavily, while employing one of the ad makers who was part of Obama’s two campaigns for president. His initial ad featured his son Dante, whose large Afro made a “visual statement that could help elevate his dad above the boring-old-white-guy stigma,” as New York Magazine put it. Treated as a second-tier candidate at best for much of the race, de Blasio is now all but assured a spot in a runoff and has a shot at clearing the 40 percent threshold to clinch the Democratic nomination outright.
(Also on POLITICO: ‘Star Trek’ actor endorses Christine Quinn)
Quinn’s fall was perhaps more predictable, but still eerily similar to Clinton in Iowa 2008. She’s been savaged by de Blasio over her pivotal role in engineering a third term for Bloomberg and herself despite a term limits law. Polls indicate the early frontrunner faces a tough hurdle making the runoff.
Like Clinton in 2008, Quinn’s campaign was propped up early on by the shaky pillars of inevitability. Clinton would have made history as the first female president; Quinn would be the first woman mayor of New York. And neither woman openly played up her potentially historic candidacy until it was too late.
Clinton’s vote to authorize the Iraq War was supposed to be a strength, but her inability in the primaries to either disavow or stand by it arguably cost her the nomination. The same could be said of Quinn’s role in providing Bloomberg a third term. She has neither fully embraced Bloomberg, nor fully distanced herself from him, and the result has been an electorate that blames her for many of the negatives of the mayor, but credits her for none of the positives.
(Also on POLITICO: NYT endorses Christine Quinn, Joseph Lhota in mayoral primaries)
Like Clinton, Quinn’s team didn’t fully appreciate just how liberal the primary electorate is. And like Clinton, Quinn didn’t seem to truly appreciate the threat of de Blasio until he had already surged ahead of her.
De Blasio, meanwhile, shares many of the president’s attributes as a campaigner. High on that list is the discipline to develop a message and strategy and not waver from it. Obama attacked George W. Bush relentlessly; de Blasio has done much the same with his anti-Bloomberg message, which was reinforced by a federal court’s finding that the police had violated the civil rights of African-American men with a stop-question-frisk procedure. (Thompson had taken a moderate stance on stop-and-frisk prior to that ruling, while de Blasio was a major critic.)
The Democratic primary electorate has made clear in recent polls that it wants a change, and de Blasio has become the change agent, much as Obama did in 2008.
“He is who he is,” one source close to de Blasio said of the candidate. The person went on to describe de Blasio’s life with his wife, Chirlane, who is black and who he has been with since both worked for the city’s only black mayor, David Dinkins. “He loves his family, he doesn’t do anything without his family. And he is a liberal, unabashed liberal who thinks we need to change the city.”
Obama-Clinton echoes in NYC race
