Mayor De Blasio Is Still Running to the Right of Candidate De Blasio

For a moment or two at the Village Independent Democrats candidate forum last night, it felt like 2013. There were the smattering of diehards raising hell about their neighborhood gripes, relishing the chance to grill the politicians who were in the room to beg for votes. Pamphlets and campaign pens were passed around. Promises were made. One woman even stormed out, fed up with it all.

But this year can’t be much like then because there is no open race for mayor. Bill de Blasio, who four years ago was a fledgling candidate forced to trek to forums like these just about every night of the week, is now mayor, and he is on a glide path to re-election. Greenwich Village’s councilman, Corey Johnson, happily endorsed him. De Blasio’s opponents, some of whom showed up to address the several dozen club members packed into the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, are little-known and underfunded.

This doesn’t mean de Blasio isn’t worth being challenged. One of the Democrats taking him on, police reform advocate Robert Gangi, is the sort of leftist provocateur needed to keep the mayor honest and highlight the ways his rhetoric has not met reality. Gangi has lacerated de Blasio for his obsession with “broken windows” policing — which no liberal outside of City Hall champions — and a ten-year plan to close Rikers Island that passes the buck onto a future mayor who could easily abandon course if political winds shift.

Scheduled for an 8:30 p.m. question and answer period, de Blasio showed up about twenty minutes late, reprising a bad habit he couldn’t kick in the first year of his term. He recapped his accomplishments quickly, situating himself in the city’s political history. “Look, twenty years we had Republicans, Independents, conservatives, whatever you want to call them — twenty years we had something that did not reflect the values of the clubs gathered here,” he said.

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