Like anyone about to head into a forced retirement, Bill de Blasio’s looking for his next gig after serving eight years as mayor of New York City.
His sights seem set on Albany — but de Blasio’s road of getting there is much longer and bumpier than the New York State Thruway on its worst day.
De Blasio all but confirmed Tuesday that like him or not, he’ll be throwing his hat into next year’s race for New York governor. In doing so, he’s attempting to break a drought for New York City mayors that makes the “Curse of the Bambino” look like a blink of the eye.
The outgoing mayor knows what we’re talking about, having rooted for the Red Sox. After winning the World Series in 1918, it took Boston’s baseball team 86 years before they won another, in 2004.
But the last time a New York City mayor was elected New York state governor was 152 years ago — when John T. Hoffman sprung from Gracie Mansion to the Governor’s Mansion all the way back in 1869.
That’s not for the lack of trying from four of the last five Big Apple mayors trying who sought to advance from what’s often described as the second-toughest job in America.
The recent futility started in 1982, when Ed Koch competed with old rival Mario Cuomo in the Democratic primary for governor. He came the closest of any recent New York mayor to winning a statewide election and/or attaining a higher office.
Having successfully pulled the city from the brink of financial disaster, Koch looked like he had a good shot at winning a statewide race. But a controversial interview in Playboy magazine — in which Koch disparaged the suburbs as being boring — didn’t win over voters there. Cuomo easily defeated Koch in the primary and went on to serve three terms at the helm of New York state.
In 2000, Rudy Giuliani — having similarly turned New York City around from crime and financial woes — had plans on succeeding the retiring Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Senate. The prospect of a showdown with Democrat Hillary Clinton was the stuff tabloid dreams are made of.
But Giuliani’s Senate bid never got off the ground amid marital troubles and a bout with prostate cancer. After gaining popularity from his response to the 9/11 attacks, Giuliani tried to parlay that into a presidential run in 2008, but he failed to make it past the Florida Republican primary. Somebody named Joe Biden helped torpedo Giuliani’s candidacy along the way; during a 2008 Democratic primary debate, Biden mocked the former mayor’s rhetoric as a repetitive “noun, a verb and 9/11.”
Giuliani’s successor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, never made a run for New York governor or senator after three terms as New York City mayor, but he made a late bid to win the Democratic primary nomination in 2020. Despite some early support and throwing half a billion dollars of his own fortune into the contest, he won just one primary: in American Samoa.
Bloomberg dropped out of the race and threw his support (and 350 delegates won in other primaries) for the eventual winner, President Biden.
And then there’s de Blasio, who like Bloomberg, had his eyes on the White House in 2020. Unlike Bloomberg, de Blasio’s campaign was an abysmal failure, as he gained little to no support in any major poll. He was out of the race well before the Iowa Caucuses.
The escapade proved more trouble than it was worth, as a Department of Investigation report revealed that the mayor failed to adequately compensate the NYPD for security details on the presidential campaign trail.
Now de Blasio wants to be New York’s next governor, and the race is already full of strong contenders, including the incumbent Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James and, likely, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
Factor in his lack of popularity in the city and suburbs, and it makes de Blasio’s quest almost quixotic. Nevertheless, hizzoner seems determined to prove that being mayor of New York City isn’t the dead-end job history has seemingly condemned it to be.
