Mayor Bloomberg: De Blasio's bid a 'class-warfare campaign'

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg implied Bill de Blasio, the leading Democratic candidate running to replace him as mayor, was using his interracial family and his rhetoric of New York as 'two cities' to gain the support of minority voters.

|
Darren Ornitz/Reuters
Chirlane McCray, the wife of New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio (r.), waves after being introduced while attending a campaign rally with their daughter Chiara (center) in Brooklyn, New York Saturday. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the Democratic front-runner to succeed him as mayor is waging a "class warfare and racist" campaign, according to an interview published on New York Magazine's website on Saturday.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in an interview that one leading Democrat vying to replace him is running a "racist" campaign based on "class warfare."

Bloomberg made the comment about candidate Bill de Blasio in an interview with New York magazine due on newsstands Monday. It appeared on the magazine's website Saturday.

De Blasio is white, but he has been polling well among blacks since he began airing television ads featuring his interracial family. His wife is black and the couple has a son and a daughter. De Blasio has also criticized Bloomberg as not doing enough for the poor, saying New York has become "two cities," one for the rich and one for everyone else.

In asking Bloomberg about the mayor's race, the interviewer calls de Blasio's bid "in some ways ... a class-warfare campaign." Bloomberg interjects, "class-warfare and racist," according to the magazine.

Asked to explain what makes de Blasio's campaign racist, Bloomberg responded, "Well, no, no, I mean he's making an appeal using his family to gain support. I think it's pretty obvious to anyone watching what he's been doing. I do not think he himself is racist. It's comparable to me pointing out I'm Jewish in attracting the Jewish vote."

Bloomberg, a self-made billionaire, said he also found de Blasio's "two cities" rhetoric divisive.

New York's wealthiest residents, he said, contribute tremendously to the city and also deliver a huge amount of tax revenue that gives the city financial muscle that other municipalities lack.

"The way to help those who are less fortunate is, number one, to attract more very fortunate people. They are the ones that pay the bills. The people that would get very badly hurt here if you drive out the very wealthy are the people he professes to try to help," Bloomberg said. "He's a very populist, very left-wing guy, but this city is not two groups, and if to some extent it is, it's one group paying for services for the other."

Bloomberg also implied that poor New Yorkers have never had it better.

"By most of the world's standards, you ain't poor," said Bloomberg, noting that in some corners of the globe, people don't have access to things like air conditioning or own their own cars. "I'm not being cavalier about it, but most places in the world our poor are wealthy. There's a lot of tragedy around the world."

At a campaign event on Saturday, de Blasio called the remarks "very unfortunate."

"I hope he'll realize that it was inappropriate and I think the people of this city are ready for us to move forward again," de Blasio said. "We have run a campaign about the ideas, about the issues, about how to move this city forward."

Bloomberg said he favors Republican Joseph Lhota and Democrat Christine Quinn among the major candidates.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Mayor Bloomberg: De Blasio's bid a 'class-warfare campaign'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0908/Mayor-Bloomberg-De-Blasio-s-bid-a-class-warfare-campaign
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe