May 16, 2019

Most New Yorkers Don’t Want de Blasio to Run. He’s Doing It Anyway.

The New York mayor claims he’s beaten Trump before—and he’s the right man to do it again.

Michael Brochstein/ZUMA

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New York Mayor Bill de Blasio officially announced on Thursday that he’s running for president, becoming the 23rd person to enter the crowded field of Democratic candidates hoping to defeat President Donald Trump in 2020.

He did so even though three-quarters of his own constituents, former staff members included, advise against such a bid. According to one NY1 reporter stationed outside Gracie Mansion, the same pleas trailed de Blasio all the way up to his launch Thursday morning.

In a video kicking off his campaign, the two-term Democratic mayor positioned himself as a progressive leader with a track record of fighting for working-class families in the country’s largest city, along with the personal experience required to take on Trump. He says in the three-minute clip: “I’m a New Yorker. I’ve known Trump’s a bully for a long time.”

“Donald Trump must be stopped,” de Blasio continues. “I’ve beaten him before, and I will do it again.”

The president dismissed de Blasio’s announcement, declaring on Twitter that “NYC HATES HIM!” While the sentiment might not be quite as strong as Trump claimed, de Blasio’s decision attracted predictable groans on social media:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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