What will NYC's post-Mayor Mike era look like? The New Yorker's John Cassidy foresees "a test case for liberal reformers everywhere"

"Some people remain skeptical, especially the establishment types who would gladly have handed [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg yet another four years. But, given the skillful campaign that [Democratic mayoral candidate Bill] de Blasio has run and the huge mandate that a record-breaking victory would confer, he could well prove to be a more formidable mayor than they suggest. In any case, a de Blasio mayoralty will be widely viewed as a test case for liberal reformers everywhere."

-- John Cassidy, in this week's New Yorker
"Comment" piece, "Liberal Agendas"

by Ken

"New York is often described as a liberal city," The New Yorker's John Cassidy reminds us at the start of his "Comment" piece, "Liberal Agendas," in this week's magazine, "but it is a long time since it has had an avowedly liberal Democrat as mayor." It's not just that we haven't had a Democratic mayor since David Dinkins left City Hall almost 20 years ago, but that Dinkins and the Democrats who preceded him governed as centrists (or farther right). The closest thing we had to a liberal, ironically, was the Republican John Lindsay, who nevertheless was, as Cassidy points out, elected as a Republican.

Barring developments that no one I'm aware of expects to develop tomorrow, Bill de Blasio will be elected to succeed Emperor Mayor Mike in January, and by a likely tumultuous margin. The Republican candidate, Joe Lhota, whose public-sector jobs have included a deputy mayorship under Rudy Giuliani and most visibly chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates most of the mass transit not just in the five boroughs but in the suburbs to the north and east. As far as I can tell, he didn't do a bad job in any of his public positions, and he might have run credibly on his administrative experience along with his business-first ideology, except that his disastrous polling position forced him to make the most spectacular noise he could. He did, and it was repellent bordering on scary. As Cassidy writes:

From Pelham Bay to Staten Island, New Yorkers seemed to be ignoring Lhota's warnings that a de Blasio victory would return their neighborhoods to the days of rampant crime and burned-out buildings. The voters are "not caught up in what the city was like twenty years ago," de Blasio said last week, in the final mayoral debate. "They want to talk about solutions today."

De Blasio, Cassidy says, "has been commendably clear about his priorities throughout the campaign."

During the debate, he reiterated that his primary aim was to "address the inequalities of this city." Last year, the poorest twenty per cent of the city's households earned, on average, $8,993, and the richest five per cent earned, on average, $436,931. De Blasio spoke again of "doing something very meaningful to increase wages and benefits"; expanding pre-K and after-school programs; repairing the relationship between the police and the residents of many communities; and making "substantial progress" toward his goal of constructing two hundred thousand affordable housing units.

This is not a kind of talk that has been heard much even on what passes for the Left "since the days of Bill Clinton and the New Democrats," as Cassidy puts it. According to this agenda, "the key to lifting up the lower ranks lies in downplaying social and economic conflicts, cozying up to business interests, and tackling inequality covertly, through largely invisible subsidies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit." De Blasio, by contrast, "in pledging to raise taxes on the rich to finance his education programs, has challenged this formula, and turned himself into the standard-bearer for what some see as a new era of urban populism."

Cassidy notes that de Blasio has "created some expectations that will be tough to meet," both because the city's financial powers-that-be are, after all, the powers-that-be and because "the forces responsible for rising inequality -- technical progress, globalization, the decline of labor unions and a broader attack on workers' rights, a culture of overcompensation on Wall Street and many corporate boards -- are largely beyond the purview of any mayor."

What's more, notwithstanding the shrieks of right-wing panic-mongers, de Blasio has a demonstrated history of working with pragmatists and championing pragmatic positions, including "the rezoning of great swaths of the city, which made it easier for developers to override local opponents."

In fashioning his populist campaign message, de Blasio was reacting to a changed political environment, one that was buoyed by the energy of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He was also pointedly contrasting his vision with what many New Yorkers had come to perceive as the imperial mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg. But his critique of Bloomberg was narrowly drawn. De Blasio differs with the Mayor on issues like taxation and policing, but he agrees with him on many others. In addition to supporting Bloomberg's pro-development policies, he has embraced his smoking ban and other public-health measures, his climate-change initiatives, and his decision to seize direct control of the city's schools. It is simply inaccurate to depict de Blasio as Bloomberg's polar opposite -- a left-wing bogeyman who will send the bankers fleeing to Greenwich. The bankers, like many highly paid New Yorkers, will stay in the city, because it provides them with proximity to others in the same industry, the ready availability of finance and labor, and the cultural benefits of living in one of the world's great metropolises.

Cassidy notes de Blasio's lack of administrative experience and its dangerous intersection with New York City's fragile financial framework, then concludes:

Will de Blasio be able to make the step up from critic and advocate to leader and administrator? Will he be able to reach agreements with the municipal unions and wring out of the budget more services for the city's residents? Can he persuade Albany to raise taxes on the rich? Does he have the flexibility to deal with upsets, such as last week's federal appeals-court decision to block a court order reforming the stop-and-frisk policy? Some people remain skeptical, especially the establishment types who would gladly have handed Bloomberg yet another four years. But, given the skillful campaign that de Blasio has run and the huge mandate that a record-breaking victory would confer, he could well prove to be a more formidable mayor than they suggest. In any case, a de Blasio mayoralty will be widely viewed as a test case for liberal reformers everywhere.

All in all, this seems to me as sound a reckoning of where we New Yorkers stand on this Election Day than we could hope to encounter.

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