New York's Trump-foe Mayor Poised For Second Term

New York's Trump-foe mayor poised for second term

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio may not excite voters but in a city pumped by loathing for home-town boy Donald Trump he is expected to cruise to re-election on Tuesday

New York,(APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 07th Nov, 2017 ) :New York Mayor Bill de Blasio may not excite voters but in a city pumped by loathing for home-town boy Donald Trump he is expected to cruise to re-election on Tuesday.

Polls open at 6:00 a.m and while turnout is expected to be low, few doubt that the 56-year-old former Brooklyn councillor, Italian-American and progressive Democrat will be back in office for another four years by the end of the night.

That will be no mean feat in the financial capital of the world's biggest economy, where the left-leaning progressive Democrat presides over an annual budget of $85 billion, a city payroll of 295,000 and 8.5 million New Yorkers.

"This is an extremely difficult city to run and it is often considered the second toughest job in the United States," says Columbia University history professor Kenneth Jackson. De Blasio has fended off Federal and state investigations into fund raising, no charges have been brought.

An early confrontation with police -- having warned his bi-racial son to take "care" with officers, has long since dropped off the headlines. His Republican challenger, 36-year-old Nicole Malliotakis, has been left trailing in the dust.

So has libertarian candidate Bo Dietl. So how has the mayor who physically towers over everyone else at six foot five (1.96 meters), criticized for schlepping out to his Brooklyn gym and lacking the charisma of his predecessor Michael Bloomberg pulled off such a home run? In an overwhelmingly Democratic city where 80 percent of the electorate voted for Hillary Clinton and who despise Trump, de Blasio has emerged a lightening rod for opposition to the White House and defending the rights of all.

In a city where 38 percent of New Yorkers are foreign-born, that counts. "He is not a bad mayor, he usually does the right thing," says Jackson. "You can't fan the flames in this city," he added in reference to the White House assault on immigration.

"But he has a tough act to follow and somehow he has not been able to convince the city business elite that he has their interests at heart." Certainly when it comes to Wall Street, De Blasio's politics are closer to Democratic Socialist and independent Senator Bernie Sanders than Clinton.

In a city where even dogs wear cashmere in winter, he has come under fire over the rising homeless population and for his proposed millionaire tax, with which he proposes to overhaul the increasingly crisis-ridden subway.

"For the 20 years before I took office, there were many policies that favored a small group of New Yorkers rather than addressing the needs of the vast majority," he explained to The New York Times in a recent interview.

Yet he has won plaudits for achieving his signature campaign promise: universal pre-Kindergarten education for four-year-olds, already rolling out a phased induction to three-year-olds. Crime is also down, a record low of 242 murders since January 1, following in the footsteps of the Republican-turned-independent Bloomberg and Republican Rudy Giuliani, the former US attorney who went after the mob.

His success is also down to the fact that his most vocal opponents are whites, which make up only 33 percent of the electorate. Married to an African American, among blacks in particular he is popular.

Charlie Kasper, a doorman in Manhattan who lives in the south Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge, says he's backing Malliotakis. "I know she can't win so its a protest vote," he told AFP. Beside the mayoral election, two gubernatorial elections are also taking place Tuesday, in what could be bellwethers of sentiment a year after Trump's election and a year before the 2018 mid-terms.

In New Jersey, Democratic frontrunner Phil Murphy is expected to replace outgoing Republican and Trump ally Chris Christie. In Virginia, Republican Ed Gillespie and Democratic Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam are neck and neck.