Loves Clinton?

De Blasio loves Clinton, but hearts Bern

In an interview with POLITICO, the New York City mayor finally embraces Hillary Clinton, but can't hide his admiration for Bernie Sanders.

By Annie Karni

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is Hillary Clinton's most out-of-sync supporter.

First, he refused to quickly endorse his onetime boss — infuriating the Clintons — and then, after finally offering his support, chased the presidential primary to Iowa in January, even after her campaign told him to stay back home in Gotham.

In an exclusive interview with POLITICO, de Blasio — jockeying for prominence as one of the country's leading progressives — declared he would work hard to help Clinton deliver a decisive win in New York's primary here on April 19. But the never-quite-on-script mayor couldn't help expressing a little affection and admiration for Bernie Sanders, whose left-of-Clinton philosophy mirrors his own.

"I have my own ideas for how to be helpful,” de Blasio told POLITICO Thursday. “We’ll listen first. I do have a day job, but I expect to have a substantial schedule in helping in any way I can.”

Clinton and de Blasio are planning to hold a joint event together in the coming weeks, a campaign official told POLITICO, and the campaign and City Hall staff are currently in discussions to work out the details.

Clinton’s operatives recognize that New York City represents a significant piece of the primary vote and that de Blasio is now seen positively by more than half of Democratic primary voters here. The African-American and Hispanic voters she’ll need to defeat Bernie Sanders still support the mayor by large margins.

But the Democratic primary has put de Blasio in a real bind. Sanders is the candidate espousing the cause of fighting economic inequality that de Blasio stands for locally and nationally. But he owes a political debt to Clinton, his most prominent personal connection and one who validated the one-time operative as an electable politician in his own right.

His support may not be as devout as the Clinton campaign is hoping for. He doesn’t hide his admiration for Sanders, whose personal beliefs seem to mirror de Blasio's more than the candidate he ultimately endorsed. Speaking about the state of the Democratic race, de Blasio appeared to be threading the needle by embracing Clinton without alienating progressives standing with Sanders and his fight for economic inequality.

Some of his closest aides, sources said, thought the progressive mayor should have endorsed the Vermont senator in the primary, despite the sense of obligation to Clinton. “I’m not going to say I haven’t met Bernie supporters who have said you should be with us,” said de Blasio, who won the mayoralty in 2013 on a message of “a tale of two cities” and raising taxes on the wealthy. But he insisted that between Clinton and Sanders, there are “a lot of shared values in their vision.”

“I’m trying to live out my values,” he explained of his Clinton endorsement. “I have a long history with Hillary and a real belief that she’s put forward a real vision. I very consistently note Bernie has made tremendous contributions. What he’s doing is very helpful for this country and for the party.”

Clinton operatives and allies do not necessarily agree. In recent days, they have accused Sanders of running a nasty and negative campaign, pointing in particular to his recent refusal to say whether he would support Clinton if he loses. On Thursday, Clinton lost her cool about Sanders’ campaign tactics, blowing up at a Greenpeace activist who accused her of taking donations from the fossil fuel industry. "I am so sick, I am so sick," Clinton said at an event in Westchester County, "of the Sanders campaign lying about me. I'm sick of it."

De Blasio, however, disagreed that there is any problem with the tone of the Sanders campaign. “Partisans in the heat of battle feel anything,” he said. “But by any objective standard, they’ve kept decorum and left a lot of room to work together in the future. The comparison of what’s happening on the Democratic and Republican side is night and day.”

He also credited the Vermont senator with bringing a substantive fight to Clinton, and making her a better candidate in the process. “It’s been about the right issues,” he said of the Democratic race. “Economic inequality and what to do with it. That debate strengthened her. She is someone who responds to a challenge. You’ve seen her debate performances become sharper and sharper.”

De Blasio also insisted Sanders has every right to stay in the race until the convention, a contention that will surely rankle some Clinton allies. “No candidate should ever tell any other candidate what to do,” he said when asked whether Sanders should stay in as the math makes it difficult for him to catch up to Clinton’s close to 300-delegate lead. “I think the debate in the Democratic Party has been a meaningful one; it’s brought a lot of people out to vote. I have no doubt that Hillary has gotten stronger and stronger throughout this process.”

The mayor also hinted that his famous children, Dante and Chiara, who played major roles in his 2013 mayoral race and starred in campaign commercials for him, may be feeling the Bern. “We scrupulously don’t speak for Dante and Chiara,” he said. “If they have anything to say, they’ll say it.”

But then he admitted: “There’s a really powerful generational reality, and they are very much of their generation.” The de Blasio kids, both college students, are part of the millennial generation that has flocked to Sanders -- and that Clinton has struggled to appeal to. “This much I can say: They are very distressed by inequality, both are very concerned about college debt and what it means,” de Blasio said, ticking off the main platforms of Sanders' campaign. “They have a very sharp real world view of the economic challenges ahead. And they’re of course fundamentally concerned about structural racism. They want to see more change. I’m not filling in the blank on what they feel on candidates. They have not articulated a whole lot to us on the candidate side. They're both adults. If they want to say, they’ll say.”

De Blasio said he was not surprised – or distressed -- to see the primary extending into April. “The Democratic Party is changing profoundly,” he said. “When I gathered people a year ago on income inequality issues, I thought something was underway. I felt it here. I don’t think I understood the fullness of it across the country until I got to talk to my fellow mayors.….What’s been so powerful has leaped forward. Bernie’s campaign has been a part of that, the fight for $15 [minimum wage] has been a part of that...this is now organic.”

De Blasio, who held out on endorsing Clinton until last October because he said he wanted to hear more about her positions, now points to the Democratic front-runner as someone who has been mischaracterized as a mainstream, moderate establishment politician -- labels that were implicit in his hesitancy to get on board. There has been a “disservice done to Hillary,” he said. “Everyone knew she was a progressive going back to the '70s. She has a thoroughly progressive history; it manifested in the healthcare fight where she was pushing the spectrum in an extraordinary way. I’m firmly in the camp that her vision for Wall Street is more rigorous and progressive than Bernie’s. I would argue what she stands for is exactly at the core of what this moment is about.”

De Blasio reminisced about the first time he met Clinton -- the day after Memorial Day in 1999, when he was summoned to the White House to brief her on New York as she considered a run for Senate.

“I had not had a historic relationship with either Clinton," said de Blasio, who at the time worked as the HUD regional director under Bill Clinton. "This was when they had already gotten pretty well into activating the campaign for United States Senate, but not been formally declared.”

De Blasio was ushered into a room at the White House to wait for the first lady. What followed, he said, left a lasting impression. “In she came, with a notepad and she just proceeded for an hour to ask shockingly well-informed and intelligent questions about New York and the issues of New York and the currents running through New York,” he recalled. “I was really blown away by her intelligence, her knowledge, her systematic way of thinking, the amount of homework she had done. There was a glancing discussion of whether I would get involved. I said I wanted to help in any way I could.”

“I think from the remove of history, a lot of people have forgotten how dramatic that [1993] healthcare reform fight was,” he said. “How much she personally was leading it. How unprecedented it was for a first lady to take on what was one of the most profound policy initiatives and lead it personally. It was a model we had never seen before. I had immense admiration for the way she stuck to her guns and took on very powerful interests and did not buckle.”

De Blasio said he expects the party to eventually coalesce around Clinton. “In Iowa,” he said, “I talked to plenty of people leaning one way or the other, who thought the other choice was good, too. I think the vast majority of Democrats will ultimately energetically close ranks.”

But as the race heads into de Blasio’s backyard, the latest Quinnipiac poll shows Sanders closing to within 12 points of Clinton, and Sanders making inroads with Democratic primary voters who could embarrass Clinton on her home turf.

The mayor offered Clinton some advice on how to win here. “I’d say keep pounding away with a sharp message of how she’s going to change the economy,” he said. “The notion should be, you win with a very sharp message and a focus on turnout. The unions and local Democratic committees supporting her have proven their turnout capacity. I think she will do very well -- my advice would be get pounding away with the progressive message.”

But de Blasio has not delivered his advice directly to the candidate. “I talked to her a few weeks back at one of the events, but not since then,” he said of his last contact with Clinton.

Some of that coldness stemmed from de Blasio’s belated endorsement. But he said he has no regrets. “It was very straightforward -- I said clearly I wanted to hear a bigger vision,” he said. “I’m very satisfied with it. And I feel comfortable that that was the way to approach it.”

Speaking of his city’s Republican candidate, de Blasio said that New Yorkers know GOP front-runner Donald Trump -- but that he has been shocked at the new version of the developer that has emerged.“People do have a better sense of him here,” he said. “Part of what’s distressing is that is substantially different from what we knew before. I had plenty of reasons to disagree with him on his ego and brashness and obsession with money. But I didn’t think of him as a racist and divisive,” de Blasio said. “What we’ve seen in the last month has been a bit of a shock and it does not represent the values of New York and New Yorkers are broadly appalled by it.”

Still, he said he was thrilled for the city that the circus has come to town, on both sides of the aisle. “The last competitive presidential primary in New York for Democrats was 1992,” he said. “That’s not good in terms of voter participation. I don’t think it’s good for issues pertinent to the state getting on the national stage. It’s very good; and it’s going to allow more discussion of the kinds of things that matter here that we need, like investing in infrastructure, mass transit, education and why the core plans to address income inequality are particularly necessary for our cities.”